Vertices
by Alhazardous
Summary: Declared legally dead shortly after leaving Inaba, Souji Seta struggles against foes far greater than he is, while the world he left behind grieves for its loss and tries to move on. Warnings, et cetera, inside.
1. Prologue

_Warnings, et cetera: this is going to be a big one. I've got an outline and everything. Future het, slash, femslash, et cetera. Please enjoy, and please forgive the way I repeatedly murder the comma. :D_

Prologue

Souji was beginning to wonder if he'd ever be able to cry the way other people did.

Sadness wasn't new to him – feelings like that were something he'd grown up with, which was pretty sad in itself. Being jerked around all the time by his mother's career, he was used to loss, certainly far more so than he could ever be comfortable with, but he was sure he shouldn't have been as dead to emotion as he felt, too empty to squeeze out even a single tear over what he had so willingly given up. His parents weren't like that; his father would blubber and weep over going on holiday, of all things, and even his characteristically stoic mother had cried when they'd been pushed out of Tokyo by her first big promotion – the city where he'd grown up, spent so much of his life building attachments and memories. He hadn't cried then, and he couldn't cry now, despite Inaba being so much more important to him, almost immeasurably so; it was almost painful that he'd watched his friends in tears, even Kanji, when he couldn't do the same for them.

The bright morning sun shone through the blinds that hung over the windows, directly into his eyes, glittering rays of light dancing merrily at the edges of his vision as they cast their glow all around the darkened, empty carriage. It infuriated him. He'd closed every curtain, shut off every light, chosen the corner furthest away from the side of the train the sun shone into, just so he could sleep and _not _have to think about anything, if only for a moment. It hadn't helped; his mind was sharp, more awake and aware than it had been in a long time, and nature didn't seem particularly interested in helping him either, with the chirping birds and buzzing bees enjoying the beautiful day just out of his reach.

He could forgive nature for that, though, even if he wanted to throttle it (as much as he could hope to throttle something that didn't have a neck), because the way the train almost flew through the countryside, stirring the grasslands into frenzied action, was an experience he'd never forget, something too beautiful to remain angry with. Pulling the blinds apart and precariously balancing his hands on the windowsill, he rested his chin on the little platform they made and stared through the windows, heart filled with longing.

The sun had reached its peak in the sky, and sat there now, proudly beaming down onto the earth. A light breeze, probably the speeding train's doing, carried a stream of cherry blossom petals through the long grasses, themselves swaying to the beat of the wind. Souji pulled the window open and inhaled the scent, a mixture of exhaust fumes, metal and _country_, an indistinct rural feeling that he wished he could surround himself in forever. The sounds and smells of the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the peace that those things brought.

That peace was abruptly shattered by the echoing cry of the train whistle that scattered the assorted crowds of birds that had chosen to rest on the roof of the train, and Souji grinned up at them as they flew away, shrieking angrily back in his direction.

As he opened the window and stuck his head out (stupidly, the back of his mind supplied), the feel of the wind running through his hair, stinging his eyes, chilling him to the bone, was one Souji tried to burn into his memory, never to forget. It was home. It made him feel free, liberated, hopeful, punctuated by the alternating sadness that he was leaving it behind, and the rushes of relief that he'd be returning soon, and maybe he could convince his parents to move there. They'd always seemed unhappy in the past – he could appreciate why – but no one could stay that way in Inaba, not there, and surely the country air would do them a world of good.

Fondly he recalled the many occasions when his cell phone had rung, sometimes at the most inopportune moments, and he'd picked up and felt the sheer happiness at the other end, flowing into him like a waterfall, before his mother would quietly but firmly start interrogating him, or his father would launch into his typical hurried stream of words that melted into each other until none of it made sense. If he could, if he ever had that opportunity, he'd show them this: the unmitigated purity of life at its own pace, the joy of unhurried travel, the extravagant beauty of a simple stream lapping at the edges of an embankment as the ants crept alongside by it, careful not to be caught up in it. If they were lucky, they'd get to see a babbling brook, something that had been so normal to his friends but so powerful, so moving, to him; it would be something to remember, something they'd never see in the cities.

The sound of the carriage door opening and a light switch being flicked didn't click inside his head until the lights came on and a splash of cold air hit his backside, but as soon as he realised the grey-haired boy pulled his head back inside and slammed the window shut. Locking away his short train of thought for later contemplation, he looked up at the intruder, wishing away the blush he was sure had crept into his face, but they hadn't noticed him, thankfully, and he used the opportunity to look them over.

The other person was slouched, of average height, maybe a little taller than him, and fairly thin, with a rather slight build. Their face was obscured by the black hooded jumper they wore, which matched their black jeans and shoes; all in all, the ensemble was obviously meant to be inconspicuous, though it didn't pull it off well. Souji's eyes had been drawn to them, after all, and remained on them as they walked towards the other end of the carriage.

When the mysterious black-clad figure stopped and straightened up, drawing itself to its full height, Souji withdrew into his seat ever so slightly. Before, they had looked unthreatening, if a little strange; now they had a full half-a-head's worth of height on him, and looked much less slight, muscles not overly large but practically rippling underneath the tightness of the hoodie. It took everything Souji had in him, every last bit of courage, not to make a noise, and he silently prayed the figure would just leave.

The prayers quickly changed to curses when the black-clothed man (it must have been a man, how could a woman look so intimidating) turned to look directly at Souji. The boy flattened himself against the back of his seat, thanking the gods that he had chosen to sit next to the door, and averted his eyes, trying hard not to make eye contact while desperately hoping the man would go away.

The tapping of light, carefully measured footsteps towards him told Souji that was not to be. Summoning every fiber of strength in his body, Souji turned to look at the man again, stunned into silence when he chose to drop into the seat across from him and idly stared out the window.

His face was still shrouded in darkness, but Souji was certain he'd seen glowing yellow eyes underneath the hood, and that worried him.

"Wonderful day we're having, isn't it?" came the voice from where Souji assumed the man's mouth was. He chose to ignore it, stiffening up and keeping his eyes trained on the other man, who was still staring out of the window at the countryside.

After a short period of awkward silence, the man tried again.

"Isn't it just the most wonderful weather?"

Souji noted that his voice sounded human, no reverberating echoes or underlying demonic scratch that he could hear, but he still kept his mouth shut. Whoever he was, he must have known most people weren't the type to start conversations with strangers on trains, and definitely not in circumstances like theirs.

The man huffed, a childishly indignant sound that made Souji smile, and tried again.

"Don't you think it's-"

"Certainly is wonderful weather," Souji said, and the man relaxed, eyes widening into big yellow circles. The change vaguely disturbed Souji (it looked almost happy, and the closest thing he'd seen to 'happy' in any other shadow was maddened glee when rejected by their true selves).

"So you do have a voice!" the man clapped, the sharp noise piercing the quiet ambience of the train. "That's great! I was beginning to think I was talking to a mute!"

Souji kept his silence, still not comfortable, though the higher pitch of the stranger's voice was off-putting.

"The strong, silent type, maybe?" the figure lifted one finger to what Souji assumed were his lips, and he realised that the man's hands were also wearing black gloves. It was eerily fitting.

"Isn't it a bit hot to walk around in an entirely black outfit?" The question felt inappropriate, considering the strangeness of the meeting, and Souji was a little hesitant to voice it, but it appeared to lower the man's guard, and for that he was grateful.

"Try wearing layers," he smiled, and Souji smiled back. For a crazy person, the intruder was quite sane.

"I am. Looking back, I regret it."

"Then wear black! I'm sure it'd suit you. Better for staying warm anyway."

Souji chuckled, and so did the other man.

"How can I help you?" he said, voice taking on an interested tone.

"There's not really all that much you can do," was the response, quick and disarming. "I just wanted some company while I waited."

"Where are you getting off?"

"Okina City," Mr. Black, Souji decided, answered casually, waving a hand in the air as if to dismiss the question. "Still a ways to go from there, though. Through Iwatodai, then a couple more major stops, until I hit the end of the line."

"Oh?" Souji leaned forward a little, relaxed. "And from there?"

"Wherever the wind takes me, I suppose," the man laughed. "I'm a nomad."

"Then you should be walking," Souji jibed back, lips curved into a small smile. "Harmony with nature, and all that."

"I wouldn't survive it," the other man quipped. "I have the feet of a seven year-old girl!"

Souji's response was a loud and hearty laugh.

"I know seven year-old girls who can walk farther than I can," and here the boy gestured towards the window, which the man seemed to understand. "That's no excuse."

"I'm sure it gets lonely out on the open road," he replied, "and I'm not the sort who can handle hours of silence."

"Then talk to yourself," Souji said, eyes full of mirth. "I do all the time. It's healthy."

"It's also mad," the other muttered, "probably very boring, too. If you already know what your partner is going to say, what's the point? Conversation's about conflict."

"You call it predictable, I call it stable," Souji said, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Certainly helps work things out. Outside perspectives can grate on the nerves."

"I'll never understand you introverted types," the man said, voice laced with hints of amusement. "Why you don't just lock yourselves up in rooms forever, I'll never know."

"Food," Souji grinned, "and occasionally, company. What else?"

"Logic I can get behind," the hooded man's eyes shutting for a moment, reminding Souji what he was dealing with. He brought his guard back up, chastising himself for letting someone get past his walls. He was far too comfortable here. "What's your name, kid?"

"I'm hardly any younger than you, I'm sure," Souji chirped, but his expression hardened, and he studied the other intently for a few seconds.

"You'd be surprised."

"It's Hiro," Souji responded, eyes narrowing to match those of the other. "Hiro Yamada."

"Not Souji Seta?"

"No," he shot back, too quickly to be believable, inwardly cursing. "Why?"

"I don't think you want to know, kid," the other man sighed, shaking his head. "I guess I'd better stop bothering you, then."

"Please," Souji frowned, "I was trying to sleep."

"Didn't look like that to me, Souji," he sighed again, and Souji jumped to his feet, alert, face drawn into a look of smooth calm.

"I told you-"

"Please don't lie," the man interrupted, snapping his fingers for effect. At least, Souji thought it was effect, until the man glared at him, crossing his arms, and suddenly everything went mad.

The spike of black flame that sprang from the floor speared souji through his heart, slamming him against the wall and impaling him there. Spatters of blood hit the carriage on all sides as the grey-haired boy screamed, eyes rolling up in their sockets, flames beginning to consume his body. The man stood, watching Souji long enough to be sure the kill had been quick and relatively clean, before shaking his head and opening the door to the next cabin. Souji fell to the floor, blood flowing from the wound that refused to cauterize, as the man stepped over him, wiped himself off, and walked out.

* * *

"Good soda," Kanji said, wiping traces of it from his lips as he threw the empty can into the trash. "Thanks, Dojima-san."

Dojima grumbled a little before taking Nanako's hand. "Are you ready to go home, Nanako? Daddy has a lot of work to do."

"Dojima-san, we can take care of Nanako," Yosuke interrupted, kneeling down in front of the young girl. "I'm sure she's sad that her big bro's gone," and she nodded, teary eyes clamped tightly shut, "so why don't we go to Junes and cheer you up? What do you say?"

Nanako had been latched onto her father's leg from the moment her brother had stepped on the train, refusing to let go even for a moment as she cried. Yosuke understood that, he really did (he wished he had someone he could grab on to like that and just cry with, but his partner had been that guy, and now he was gone), but he didn't like the idea of letting her go home and sit around the house, alone, moping for the rest of the day. If being without Souji started out well for all of them, or, well, as well as being without Souji could possibly be (until they'd had time to get over him, not very, he assumed), it would very likely carry on the same way, and that could only be a good thing, right? The quicker they were all back to their usual selves, the better. He preferred 'easily infuriated' to 'infuriating'.

His tangent was brought to an untimely end when Nanako choked out something Yosuke assumed was some form of assent. Letting go of Dojima, she walked (very slowly, very carefully, trying hard not to fall) over to Teddie's side, before grabbing his legs and burying her face in his waist instead. Yosuke sympathised with the poor blond, who was a full head shorter than Dojima; he found the little girl's arms wrapped tightly around him until he barely had the breath left to choke anything out himself, but with great effort he extricated himself from Nanako before effortlessly lifting her up into his arms with a firm embrace of his own.

Yosuke took that to mean they were ready to go, at least, and with a final nod at the rest of the group and a slightly apologetic glance for Dojima, he led them in the direction of Junes. The older man, finding himself left alone, whipped a chunk of grey plastic out of his pocket and rapidly pressed a few buttons on the front of it before putting it away again and walking in the other direction.

Yosuke noticed the buzz of the phone in his jacket when Chie sidled up to him and poked him with one of her long, bony witch-fingers. He hoped his sudden glare said everything his voice didn't.

Apparently it hadn't, because the grin that spread across her face as she pinched his phone out of the pocket of his jacket spoke unmistakably of mischief.

"You're kinda spacey today," she said as she flipped open his phone, and he tried hard to ignore the sing-song tone she put on. "What's eating you?"

"I'm not a steak, Chie," he snapped back, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. The affronted look she shot at him didn't suit her face at all.

"I never said you were, you..." she paused, hoping to find the right words. "You idiot! I just wanted to know why-"

"Go bug someone else, Chie," Yosuke sighed, "I'm not in the mood."

She looked livid.

"Fine, sheesh! Excuse me for wanting to help!"

For a moment, Yosuke could have sworn Chie was about to stomp off in a tantrum (it would be so much like her), but then she visibly deflated, and his guilt multiplied.

"C'mon, Yosuke, don't be like that," she muttered. Yosuke bit his lip. "I'm trying to keep things from getting any more..."

"I know, and I'm sorry, it's just..." He fumbled with his thoughts for a moment before settling on what to say. "I'm just a little annoyed. I'm sure you are too, Chie, and so's everyone else. We might as well just relax for a while, get our heads back together." Yosuke felt like 'just' and 'well' were the only words he knew at that moment.

"Yeah, Chie-senpai," Kanji's voice cut in, and Yosuke was grateful for the help, "I know I am. Tired, that is, and a little pissed off." Yosuke felt for the guy; they'd never gotten along like a house on fire, but he understood what he was going through. Souji had been his closest (and possibly first) real friend, and he'd left, they'd all been left behind, and now they were all struggling with the reality: reality without their leader, the one they'd all turned to in their times of need.

"I know," Chie grumbled, "so am I. But he wouldn't want us to feel sorry for ourselves, right?" The grin that crosses her face seemed forced to him. He didn't like the idea that even Chie was as depressed as he was, because she was always happy, perky, bubbly, all that stuff – then he remembered Souji had been her training partner and her best male friend, and he wondered if there was anybody in Inaba who hadn't been best friends with the guy, who hadn't depended on him.

Yukiko chose that moment to pipe into the conversation.

"I wonder how he is," she said, voice tinged with both sadness and curiosity. "He didn't look very torn up."

"I concur," Naoto added, drawing Yosuke's attention to her. Again he reminded himself that despite all appearances the prim detective was just as human as he was, even if she was more detached than anyone else he knew. "He appeared rather serene for a man about to be torn away from his home." She raised her hand to her chin and held it there, standing still, lost deep in thought. Her other hand tapped rhythmically on the side of her thigh, and Yosuke found it hypnotising. "Perhaps I should have accompanied him after all. I'm certain he would have enjoyed the company."

"But what about us, Naoto-kun?" Rise grinned sweetly from where she had attached herself to Teddie's side. The blond was still carrying Nanako, who looked like she'd fallen asleep; he was unusually quiet, a contemplative frown sat where his usual wide smile would be. Everything about him, even the fact that he was effortlessly holding Nanako, was disquieting. Yosuke looked hard at Rise and gulped, hoping whatever phase the blond was going through would hurry up and pass.

"I am sure," Naoto began, the sound snapping Yosuke back to attention, "you would have been fine without me. Senpai is alone, after all. We are together."

"That's exactly why we still need you, Naoto-kun," Rise countered, wagging a finger in front of the bewildered detective's face. Yosuke wondered how she could be so peppy. "Senpai's so strong, he can handle anything alone. Even a god," which Yosuke couldn't argue with. His partner had handled a god alone, in the end. "We need each other to keep moving forward!"

That made Yosuke blanch, and Kanji bumped into his back, knocking him forward a little. He turned and scowled at the younger boy, who sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, eyes averted, before Yosuke turned around to keep walking and resume his thoughts. He wasn't weak, he could take care of himself. What made her think they needed each other? What made her think Souji could go it alone?

"Yeah, Naoto-kun, Rise's right," Kanji said, "We need each other right now, simple as that. I know I need you guys."

"We'll be here," Yukiko said, softly, but with that inner strength they'd all come to expect from her, leaving no room for debate. "I promise."

Kanji blushed at that, mumbled something unintelligible, and starting walking more quickly; Rise, sensing his apparent discomfort, threw tact away like an old toy, bouncing over to him and bombarding him with questions any sane man would refuse to answer. He did. Behind them, Naoto fell into step beside Chie and Yukiko, the three engaging in some sort of hushed discussion, muted tones barely audible but nonetheless harsh.

Yosuke pondered putting on his headphones and letting his music drown everything out until they reached Junes, but one look at the (despondent) Teddie and he discarded that notion. Choosing to approach the boy with as much tact as he could muster, Yosuke tapped him on the shoulder, startled as Teddie jumped out of his reverie.

"Yosuke!" The blond cried, shocked. No one else seemed to notice. "What is it?"

"Everything alright, man?" Yosuke said, eyes boring into the blond's innocent baby blues. Teddie nodded.

"I'm fine."

"Thinking?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know you could." Teddie rolled his eyes. "About?"

"A lot of things. Sensei," the blond shrugged, "going home, you guys, Nana-chan. It's all beary confusing."

"Enough with the bad puns," Yosuke groaned, slapping his forehead. That got a little smile out of the blond. "If anything's going to kill us, it'll be them."

"You just don't appreciate my esoteric sense of humour!"

Yosuke reached out to hit Teddie upside the head, but the boy nimbly darted out the way, laughing. Yosuke laughed in turn, a little of the shadow that clouded his thoughts clearing.

"Where'd you learn that word, Ted, you little-"

"Sensei taught me," the blond said, and surprisingly the mood didn't sour. Maybe this was progress. "He said to use it on you if you ever 'got uppity'. I didn't really know what he meant. Are you 'uppity', Yosuke?"

"Why, you little-" Yosuke snarled as he swiped at the blond, careful not to harm Nanako. Teddie cleverly used her as a shield, stepping smoothly aside as Yosuke overbalanced and careened onto the pavement.

"Hey, be careful, you guys! Don't hurt Nanako-chan!" Chie shouted from behind them. Yosuke watched in awe as, unexpectedly, a weight pulled Teddie down to the ground.

"Ouch," the bear groaned. "Kanji, can you take care of Nana-chan for me? I can't lift her!"

"Sure," Kanji answered, extricating the quietly sleeping girl from the bear's arms and lifting her up to his shoulders. "What's up? She too heavy for you after all, you dumb bear?"

The fondness in Kanji's voice was obvious, but Teddie still chose to be indignant.

"I am not dumb!" he huffed, crossing his arms. "She wasn't heavy, then she was. I don't know why."

"Probably a shadow thing," Kanji replied, "you weren't thinking about her and then you were. Happens to the best of us, man."

The way Kanji ruffled Teddie's hair was cute, in a weird way Yosuke didn't think he was comfortable with, and Teddie looked pleased for a moment until Rise cooed at the sight, and then he pulled away sharply, almost retching. Kanji made no move other than lifting Nanako into a more comfortable position in his arms, smirking all the while.

"He'll be a good dad someday," Chie whispered into Yukiko's ear, and the furious red that washed over her face matched that of her favourite red sweater. "Even if he is a punk."

Kanji, who had paid no attention, continued walking towards Junes, and Yosuke savoured the opportunity to confront Teddie, mock-punching him repeatedly while the others rushed to catch up with the bleach-blond.

"You sure you're alright?" Yosuke hoped he wasn't pushing too much, but Teddie's bright grin allayed his fears a little.

"Can't be sad forever, right, Yosuke?"

The boy wearing headphones grinned, remembering when his partner had told him the same thing, that fateful day by the riverside.

"Yeah," he smiled, feeling some of his doubts beginning to lift. "Yeah, you can't."

* * *

It had been an eventful morning indeed.

He had, for once in his long career, decided to take a break, if only so he could (for the first time, no less) observe the fruits of his labours. He had, for once in his long life, chosen to leave his self-imposed prison, if only to ensure that nothing had diverged from the plan that was dictated by fate (that would be unacceptable, after all). He had, for once in the entirety of his memory, allowed himself to truly enjoy the outside world, one he had not seen since days long before he had taken up his position. These were all things he had planned, expected, prepared for, and all that. They'd been his choices.

What he had not expected, which certainly was not his choice, was the chaos that would threaten to break free so quickly after his departure. His master had warned him that there would be repercussions for his actions, that a rewrite of his contract would be necessary if he chose to carry out his plans; he'd chosen to disregard those warnings, and though he did not regret his actions, per se, he found it would be slightly more inconvenient to reshape the passage of time, the sequences of events, now that they were not what he'd prepared for. It was an irritation, certainly.

Confidence was key, however; he remembered that from before, the mysteriously sparse space in his memories that he could never quite control, never influence. Occasionally snippets would return to him, to provide him with gems of advice (which he always acted on – they were always appropriate, after all), the knowledge safely stored away in his mind where he continually believed it would be safe. His mind was meant to be inescapable; instead it felt much like a sieve, where the information he desired to keep drained away time after time, through cracks that not even his master could fill.

He supposed the problem began with his fractured mental state. Observing such a large scale operation, managing it all from corner to corner, ensuring everything constantly ran smoothly in the face of dangers that piled up day after day, threatening to destroy it all, was no easy task. Certainly not one a mortal, even an ascended mortal, could hope to fully comprehend. Even the mortals as powerful, as wise, as ancient as those who served him were continually outwitted by this machine, the one only he could fully grasp, which invariably led to him being stretched far too thin for his own good. In his flitting lapses of concentration (moments of weakness, his master would say, and he would nod along, always one to please) something always went wrong, and this was no exception; some part of him had decided it was acceptable, nay, even beneficial that he leave the management of the master's domain in the hands of talented but inexperienced aide. That was a mistake that he chose not to rectify, despite the backlash that even now loomed overhead, threatening to crush everything he had built, because it barely ranked amongst the other mistakes he himself had made in his handling of the problem. It was what had brought him here, made him feel alive again, the physical memories his body held thundering through him like stampede after stampede even if his mind could not comprehend them. If fixing those mistakes cost him his opportunity to experience humanity in all its grandeur again, then he would allow them to exist, master be damned.

Igor sipped his coffee, and acknowledge that perhaps age had not dulled his senses after all, as much as he had hoped. Choosing to drink so quickly was a mistake of its own league: the dark liquid still burned his tongue, hot and bitter and strong, like pure darkness coursing down his throat. The amusement over something so simple that clouded him was almost palpable, he supposed, and likely infectious, judging by the way the many passersby seemed to linger in his vicinity, as if leeching on the mirth that filled his heart. He believed it was one of humanity's greatest treasures, that communal soul they shared; then he remembered that he had willingly chosen to become human for this venture, and therefore he was part of it also. That thought itself made his smile widen even further.

He thought back to the earlier part of the day (or at least, it seemed like a day; in the blink of an eye, time could reach its end under his rule). Elizabeth, bless her dear heart, had once told him that if he took it upon himself to leave the Velvet Room and see the world, it would be best were he to take some sort of disguise, if only so he could hide his obvious power and age. At the time, he had told her he never intended to – he had seen his fill of all worlds, and none satisfied him as much as the world within the heart of each and every being – but that morning, when he'd looked in a mirror, he realised that appearance must have been barely a shadow of an idea in the expanse of his mind, for he had allowed himself to become terrifyingly monstrous.

In fact, he came to a few important realisations that morning. The first had been that, by human standards, Elizabeth (bless her dear heart) had been right. He looked positively mad. The gigantic, bloodshot eyes, feral grin, bald head, and hunched back were merely part of the whole that explained why his guests were always so fearful of him; they were quite clearly not traits that combined in a manner conducive to a good impression. Dimly he recalled an ancient proverb, that the nose was the one part of the body that never stopped growing, and he supposed that his nose, impossibly long and hooked to an outsider as it may appear, gave away his immeasurable age. The second realisation was that long ago Elizabeth (bless her dear heart, he repeated, like a mantra) had stumbled upon a photo of a young man he had not recognized at the time and had guarded it jealously ever since, even from her beloved sister.

Reaching into his pocket, he drew the photograph out, laying it squarely in the centre of the table in front of him. He had stolen it from Elizabeth (bless her dear heart, because no one else will) long ago, longer than he cared to remember, and now, he watched it warily. Memories were fickle things, especially those that were captured, like photographs, portraits and recordings, and he was not keen on doing something so ignorant as angering one, even as he laid a hand above it, on it, grasping at its essence, for what he knew it contained.

After a brief search, he found his target, hastily drawing it out and wrapping his hands greedily around it even as the light faded from the photograph that was now missing one of its participants. Peering into the murky depths of the crystalline sphere he now held, he allowed it to flow through him, filling him with what could only be its memory.

It stung when the sensation left him, the pain refusing to subside, and even as he moved towards the mirror he knew the process had failed.

Nothing had changed: he still held his own form, perfect and immutable as always. So, when the realisation of _why_ finally made sense, he understood why nothing seemed to want to move, least of all his body.

Another proverb swam unbidden to the front of his mind, this one 'time is only as grand as he who wields it', and again he quashed the thought, dismissing it as he resisted the urge to curse. He needed to find the picture and -

There it was. Normal, unchanged, once again containing the same smiling man flanked by what Igor knew were his friends.

Memories began to dredge themselves up, and if his head could hurt any more Igor was sure it would. How he had once been, how time could make him that way again, were he to accept its assistance gracefully. He knew the risks – none knew better than him how time treated those outside its reach when they deigned to step into it – but he agreed anyway; the nagging feeling that he needed to hurry had intensified, a human urgency he had forgotten after so long spent inhuman.

When time itself released him he was young again, lacking true memory but with the same youthful vigour and bravado that had brought him to his master in the first place, he assumed. Stepping in front of the mirror one final time, he took a look at his reflection with a contented smile.

Elizabeth, bless her dear heart, had kept the picture for a reason. The man he was now, the man he had once been, towered over his true form – far more human than he remembered himself being. Even his nose was normal, though his eyes still looked tired, shadowed, and noticeably red around the edges.

He was sure he couldn't quite change fully without becoming a human, but what he had was easily good enough. The main in the picture had stood tall and proud, muscular but not overly so, with a slender frame and flawless tan skin topped with a crop of silver hair that hung down to the small of his back, loose and straight. His hands had been those of a pianist, long, thin, elegant and well-kept, but what was most intriguing was his face, which didn't resemble him as he remembered himself at all, bright golden eyes and fearless grin sitting respectively beside and below a small, upturned nose. He was _angular. _Igor didn't think he'd ever been angular.

Dressed in a neat, pinstriped business suit, he held an air of strength and pride that didn't reflect what Igor was at all. The picture was of a a child, young, inexperienced and given to the world for its consumption; he'd become jaded, old, scholarly, things he supposed his younger self had never imagined. It was life against _un_life, and Igor found himself missing those days when he had not been caught in limbo between worlds, even if he couldn't quite remember them.

Straightening his new body up as best he could (it still seemed overly willing to hunch), he found his mind warring over which was best, in spite of the pointless nature of the question: whether to leave, or to stay.

Of course, the decision had been a simple one; it was, after all, how he came to be there, sat calmly outside some sort of gigantic building bustling with people in the town where the wild card had lived, sipping on a delightful, if slightly burnt, coffee as he considered the next course of action.

He had felt it, the moment the boy had disappeared from his realm of control; it was unfortunate that another wild card had been lost, this one so needlessly, but it couldn't be helped. Considering that his new acquaintance's plans were already in motion, very little could be changed now, even were he willing to act – but act he would, if only so his master would know something had been done. Guidance, advice, empowerment, that was his role. Directing the players from afar. If he made to rewrite his contract, perhaps he could change that, but not without good reason, not for the sake of a single boy he found himself caring for overmuch. If he had been able to refrain from doing the same for the others, even the one who had shown so much potential, it would be no challenge to do so now.

When a group of children appeared (each touched by the wild card, he saw, making sure he kept that knowledge for the future), taking scarce notice of him, he decided to make sure things stayed that way, and make himself scarce. Seeing them only reminded him of humanity's lamentable fallibility, the short burst of glory that was life, and he could not bring himself act if he were plagued with those kinds of doubt.

Rising from his seat, Igor conjured a door to the Velvet Room and quickly left, unseen. Upon his arrival, his body once more its immortal self, Igor found his other assistant, Margaret, curled up into a ball on the chair where the wild card had once sat, arms wrapped around her legs and face buried in the gap between them. She looked as if she were sobbing, and he took care to avoid catching her off-guard, but she started at the sound of him closing the door behind him, and rushed to his side.

He looked at her, for a moment. Though she was rigid, arms held respectfully at her sides, her beautiful features were bent into a proud grimace, cheeks stained with tears. Her eyes themselves were reddened, glistening with wetness; he'd be a fool to ignore her sadness and he had an inkling that he knew why. In fact, her eyes were almost as bloodshot as his own, he mused, as he placed his hands on her shoulders, nose carefully pointed upwards in the air.

Igor did not know when she had ceased to be his assistant, ruling over power, and become too human for her own good, but he could sense something had changed in her, the poor girl, the way it had in Elizabeth (bless their dear hearts). When sobs began to wrack her body, and she fell forward, to her knees and into his arms, he knew, and her tearful cries shooting through him woke what little humanity he'd managed to retain.

He gently wiped the tears away from her eyes (he found it surprising that he knew how to do all these things instinctively, knew what needed to be done) after she had finished crying, another memory floating to the front of his mind, of a girl, a beautiful girl, whom he had comforted, long ago.

"Master, he," she stuttered, eyes downcast, "he is gone. I left, to, to look for h-him, but he isn't there. He's-"

Igor held her, through her sudden spasm, as the tears started again. He had done the same for Elizabeth (bless their dear hearts, he sighed to himself, shaking his head) and he would do the same for any other assistants he may later have, who might be so foolish as to choose humanity over power.

"He's gone, Master," Margaret whimpered through her tears, jarring him. "He shouldn't, shouldn't be gone, but he is, and I don't know why!"

Igor elected to remain silent.

"So much power, so much strength, wasted," she sobbed, "An entire World lost to us, forever, and I failed to protect it..."

As she trailed off, Igor shushed her, hoping she'd stay silent. She was pale, paler than was healthy, and shook on her feet, incapable of standing steadily alone; he helped her to her feet, beckoning her to a chair across from his, which she gratefully took. He tried to maintain what he hoped was a comforting smile, which seemed to help.

"Now, my dear," he said, knowing there was far more to it than what she was willing to share, or even what she knew. "It is time we spoke, properly, the same way I did with your sister. Please, sit still and listen."

* * *

Lunchtime!

The best time of day, as far as he was concerned. That morning his wife had packed him an extra special lunch, the kind that always made him hungry whenever anyone so much as mentioned it, even if he'd just eaten. It'd been a lovely gesture, considering he usually did everything for her, not the other way around, even packing lunches, but he appreciated it; with all that high-powered businesswoman knowledge clogging up her head he sometimes wondered if she had the time and energy to care about him!

Ripping open the lid of the lunchbox, he began to scoff down the contents. His wife always complained that he inhaled his food rather than eating it, so he never appreciated the delicacies she would prepare with love and affection, but he was always so hungry, and the food was so good, he could never help himself. Lunch was no different, and he hadn't eaten all day, in a hurry to make his shift on time. He'd gotten sidetracked by his extraordinarily affectionate wife, with her teasing, and all those new _clothes_, which was a wonderful surprise, considering the last two years of their relationship had been stale and argumentative, but it had meant he was late for his shift. Not a bad thing, though, not after-

A blinking light on the control panel in front of him distracted him mid-bite, and he leaned over to pull a lever that he hoped would deal with the issue when a scream from behind him startled him out of his seat, knocking over his lunch. As he scrambled to pick up what he could, another scream made him drop it all again, and he cursed his clumsiness as he hurried to the door to investigate.

He needn't have bothered. As soon as he opened the door, the figure that charged right in through it (on fire, no less) batted him aside like a fly. Presumably it was very, very angry, judging by the way turned and sealed the doorway with enough heat to melt the skin off his hands. How could he drive the train like that?

As soon as his head connected with the wall, the driver was knocked unconscious; meanwhile, the figure that had attacked him stabbed rapidly at buttons, pressing whatever was closest while pulling randomly on levers, holding tightly onto the train's control panel as he worked. No one had been able to get past the sealed door, so no one had tried to bother him, although it looked like the driver was beginning to wake up (his head was swimming, though, and he didn't think he'd be very effective at stopping the mad trainjacker), but the constant banging and screaming was starting to get on his nerves. He'd go mad if he didn't finish quickly.

The train turned on the tracks, emerging out of a tunnel towards what looked like a river, running deep and fast. What better luck could he have asked for than that?

Seeing it spurred the newly-awakened driver into action, in spite of the pain in his head he was sure was a concussion. With the way everything around him was shaking and sputtering, the screams from outside the front carriage slowly getting even louder, he knew the train was undoubtedly too unstable to cross the single-track bridge – the figure at the helm quietly laughed, apparently satisfied, so the train driver through himself at him. It was time to be a hero.

After a brief and pointless struggle, the man pinned the train driver to the chair, holding his hands above him as he worked on the panel – the driver fought to free himself, but the grip was just too strong to break, and eventually he _felt _the train give way beneath him, slowly leaning towards one side. He knew his train, and he knew what was going to happen, but that didn't make him feel any better, and his stomach threatened to climb up his throat and out his mouth when the figure let go of him and punched through the triple-layered plexiglass windows like a hot knife through butter, right before jumping through them.

"Crazy bastard," the driver snarled as he rose to his feet, still unsteady. He rushed to the window and looked out, but there was no sign of the assailant; hopefully he'd been torn apart. "Crazy bastard!" he yelled again, hoping he'd heard.

There was very little he could do now. Lifting the receiver for the loudspeaker system, he spoke a few words of apology (on his company's behalf, so no one could sue) before warning everyone to hold tight in their seats, because it was going to be a bumpy ride.


	2. Chapter 1: Window To The Truth

_Thanks to everybody who read, reviewed, alerted and/or favourited my work. I'm very happy with you all. eggmiester, your kind words are the nicest I've had in a review so far, so thank you for those! Here's the second chapter, consider it dedicated to you, and you too, ZxZ. Here's the next chapter, and don't worry - Souji's not done yet! Death isn't enough to stop him, not by a long shot. :D_

_I expressly apologise to all forms of punctuation (except interpuncts, they suck) for the way I butcher them in my writing. Without further ado, Chapter 2! :D_

* * *

**Window To The Truth**

_Late afternoon, March 21__st__, 2012_

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! This is your local news station, broadcasting to you from the scene of a horrific train accident on the Okina line, near the town of Inaba. After the recent string of murders in the area and the confusion surrounding the details of the case, we are forced to ask ourselves, why? Why have things come to this? Why does one small town in the middle of the countryside suffer so much? Tonight we hope to find some of the answers."

The assorted camera crew, shuffling nervously around the ruins of the train, signalled the reporter to come over, and he did, carefully edging his way around the wreckage that still steamed and smoldered hours after the accident. Again carefully stepping over a muddy ditch that he'd nearly tripped up over earlier, he joined the camera crew, themselves still intently focused on recording the devastation left by the accident. He moved to stand by one of the carriages laid over on its side, not yet fully submerged in the river, and waved over his personal camera-man, who hurried to his side and focused the camera on him with practiced ease. He tried to keep a smile off his face; it wouldn't look good to be caught smiling on camera after such a tragedy, but damn if he wasn't glad he'd been picked to cover the scene. A promotion'd be his yet.

"Coming up shortly, we have statistics, interviews, damage reports and footage of the accident, all for your perusal. Please stay tuned for more information on this shocking event!"

"You're too nonchalant," his camera-man mimed. The reporter wasn't the best lip reader, and could have sworn the word he'd said had been 'entranced, but he nodded anyway, heart clenching in his chest. His camera-man was one of the best in the business, at both shooting and editing, and he'd been hoping to impress the guy, not disappoint him or get on his nerves as it felt like he'd been doing the entire time. "Try to be a bit less robotic, a bit more sympathetic. C'mon, let's start over."

He agreed, but chose not to share his thoughts. The man nodded forgivingly at him, understanding; he'd probably worked with newbies all the time before, knew they were overemotional, overeager, overwhelmed, all the overs – he'd tried to distance himself, mostly to look professional, but also partly so he wouldn't start retching in the middle of a take.

"Yo," another voice interjected from somewhere near the bridge, "we shooting live, boss?"

"Not a chance," his camera-man shouted back, red-faced. "Never shoot something like this live, 'specially not with a newbie on board. Don't you know that by now, Akemi?"

Akemi grinned sheepishly back, and the reporter tried to memorise his name and face. It wouldn't do to forget who his crew actually were.

"Just curious, boss. You said you had high hopes for this kid."

He couldn't stop the blushing beam that spread across his face after that, nor the way he squeaked delightedly, but his camera-man (technically his boss) paused only to throw a contemptuous look at Akemi before turning back to him. Politely he did his best to look abashed.

"Don't let it go to your head, kid," he sighed coolly, twiddling with some of the buttons on his camera equipment. The reporter straightened up and mock-saluted back.

"Of course not, sir!"

"Damnit, Iori," the man groaned, hands clutching his face out of exhaustion and irritation, "don't even start with me. You should be thanking whatever God you worship that this hasn't gotten any worse since your clumsy ass got here."

Iori did his best to look abashed, again. It didn't quite take.

"Shouldn't give the boss so much lip, Iori," another one of the camera crew, this one a pretty girl with short black hair and a nose piercing, supplied, slapping him on the back. He shrugged, used to her attempts at getting on his nerves by her now, as he traipsed over to the door of one of the only carriages still standing upright on the train and pulled it open.

"Someone's got to, Midori," he called back, eyes scanning the empty carriage for anything out of the ordinary, "or he'll get too big for those big boots of his, am I right?"

"You're right, man," she laughed in return, "and hey, he bumps you off the chain, I jump right up it, so keep right on at him!"

"You never stop being a bitch, Midori," Iori sighed. "Someday, I'll be the one giving the orders, then we'll see who gets bumped off!"

"Keep dreamin', college boy!"

"Hey, I resent that! I'm no college boy!"

"Not smart enough for it, yeah!"

"Say that to me, you-"

"Will you two lovebirds cut it out already?" The biggest of the bunch yelled, a tall, girthy man with what the others thought was a badass scar stretching across his cheeks. Iori turned white as a sheet.

"Screw that, she's not my-"

"No way I'd ever date-"

"Enough!" he shot back, glaring at the two. His eyes, aflame with barely restrained anger, cowed them both into silence. "I'm warning you, next one of you makes so much as a noise before we've cleared this thing up'll get a face full of metal!"

Wisely, Iori and Midori resumed investigating the train, met with giggles from Akemi and disapproving frowns from the boss. Pulling his mask of stoic, firm professionalism back into place (metaphorically, of course), he resumed poking around the carriage, hoping to find something significant, or awesome, or maybe both, if he was lucky.

So far, they'd found nothing noteworthy at all, anywhere. He cursed quietly in frustration. Anything would've been better than wasting their time scouring what was left of the train, but the stubborn morons at the prefectural police office had denied them access to the real scene in the front few cars, so they'd been forced to content themselves with scraps further toward the back.

Luckily, it hadn't all been a blowout on the other fronts; several witnesses to the accident had come forward for interviews, people who'd been walking or driving the roads nearby, and they'd rushed to grab them as soon as possible, before one of the bigger news corps swooped in and stole them away. They'd ended up with some pretty decent exclusive stories, enough to run a headline or two in the next television bulletin, maybe an online front page article or two, but nothing explicit or really interesting. The important stuff – people on the train, evidence searches, that rumour about the burnt door and the 'assailant' the police were circulating amongst themselves, all of it had slipped through their fingers, and the worst part was how uncooperative the police were being. Even the local police department, hick town Inaba's finest, had sticks up their ass about policy and protocol and all that stuff.

Apparently the only casualty, shockingly enough, had been some punk golden boy from their town nearby. No one would tell them anything freely (or, hell, legally), but they'd bribed a couple of crooked cops for the dirt and they'd had a lot of it, certainly that much; judging by how they were behaving, though, and the way they clammed up about anything really exciting, the guy was someone important back home. That was enough for Iori's story, anyway. That one kill could make or break his career, and he'd chosen to bank on it, a desperate gambit by a desperate young reporter with few other prospects for upward goddamn mobility, career-wise.

Now all they had to do was find a dead body, maybe one the cops had overlooked (they'd been pretty damn thorough, though, the bastards), or evidence of a hijacking (if they were lucky) and he'd be set for life. Iori, the hotshot new investigative journalist, they'd say, and they'd flock to his blog like ants to a picnic, seeking nuggets of his wisdom until they'd bled him dry. He'd be a star.

"Hey, I think I mighta found something!" Akemi's voice piped up from one of the carriages on the other side of the bridge. Eagerly Iori turned towards the door and ran, pausing only to shriek like a baby when he stubbed his toe on one of the upturned – and stupidly sharp – chairs. How it'd been loosened enough to fall away from the damn metal it was welded to he didn't know, but it seemed like the world was out to get him. When he caught sight of his colleagues sprinting past him, towards his destination, he picked up the pace.

"Hurry up, guys, this could be what we're after!" Midori added, leaping across the makeshift stepping stones in the river like a dragonfly. Iori was hesitant to follow after her – he'd never been that nimble, nor did he want to trip and fall into the fast-flowing watery deathtrap – but he forgot his hesitations when his boss shoved past him and lunged across the gaps. It couldn't be that hard.

Gingerly, Iori made his way across the river, only speeding up when the 'oohs' and 'aahs' of his workmates became loud enough for him to hear. By the time he reached them, they were already snapping away photos, clamouring around a lone spot in the corner of the compartment; Iori made his way over to them, kneeling between the biggest man and Midori as he looked for whatever big break they'd found.

"I don't see it," he said, squinting.

"Well, duh," Midori said, as rudely as she could. Iori knew if he bothered looking at her she'd be rolling her eyes. "No light. Here, college boy, have a flashlight like all the smart people."

"Gimme that," he muttered, snatching the torch from Midori's outstretched hand. His face reddened when she tittered ever so slightly. "Thanks. What am I looking for, boss?"

"It's all over the place," his camera-man answered, pointing at a dark smudge on the wall. "Just switch on your light."

Iori complied, lifting the glittering beam of light up to his head. Fondly memories of doing the same in school popped into his head. Scanning the room with the torch, he noted nothing unusual anywhere besides the spot they were huddled around, save the scattered debris; nonetheless he noted that something seemed out of place with the open window.

Open. Well, that was the kicker, wasn't it? Iori moved over to it, lightly running his free hand over the sill. Akemi slapped it away, and he nursed the injured hand, more than slightly miffed with the guy.

The other windows had all been shattered or cracked, but the one he was stood in front of was starkly undamaged. Leaning over to pull it closed, he jumped back when he noticed the handprints he'd left all over it – big, fresh, and _red_.

Nervously pointing his torch at the floor beneath him, Iori gulped. A long trail of blood ran from the window, looking out at the river, to a bigger pool of blood by the wall his boss had pointed out. The wall itself was stained with dried blood, a thick line of it dripping down into the pool by the floor; it looked suspiciously like something vaguely human-shaped had been thrown at it as it bled, and damn, whatever it was certainly bled. Lifting his own dampened hand to his face, he covered his mouth, trying to stop his stomach from escaping through his throat.

"Shit," he whispered hoarsely. The others dragged him away to a clean seat at the other end of the carriage; the moment he sat in it he threw up. Midori eyed him with disgust, but quietly carried on rubbing his back in circular motions as they moved him to another clean seat, hoping it'd be enough to soothe him.

"Yeah. What do we make of this, guys?" Akemi's words were gratefully accepted by the others, to take their minds off Iori, who was still gasping for air.

"Well, we tell the police, of course," Midori snapped. "Civic duties and all that shit. It's a crime to withhold information, and Iori's already left his handprints all over the place."

"Pretty sure it ain't," Akemi said, staring hard at the blood. "See, this is our scoop. We let it go, we're royally fucked, because we got nothing that the bigger news groups don't have. We keep this to ourselves for now, get our names out there, then maybe we tell the police. Or, maybe, we destroy everything, leave no evidence behind. Then? No handprints."

"Fuck the scoop, and fuck you," said Midori, now glaring at the distracted man. "I'm not hiding anything from the police. That's a surefire route to prison. Ain't happening."

"Midori's right," the biggest of them chimed in, "we can't keep this to ourselves. We could be looking at a bona fide crime scene."

"Exactly! Fuck your fancy Latin bullshit," Akemi snarled. The big man shrank back into his seat. "Boss, you understand where I'm coming from, right? You've got me on this one? Tell me you've got my back, boss."

There was total silence for the span of a few seconds. Iori held his breath; next to him, he could feel Midori doing the same. No one brought themselves to look at Iori's camera-man.

"Yeah, I've got your back," he finally said, and Midori gasped. Iori let the breath go, knowing what was to happen next. "So we're two for two, people with ambition versus cowards. What about you, Iori?"

Iori took a few moments to carefully consider. This could make or break his career, maybe even his whole life. The police were just around the corner, literally, and crossing them would be crossing the state. That would be a huge deal if anyone ever found out. On the other hand, it was _the break _he was after, most certainly, if they could pull it off right. That was the real question they wanted answered – could they pull it off right?

Midori jabbed him in the shoulder, and he jumped, shocked back into life. She stared pointedly at him; his head was still spinning, after what he'd seen, but he'd be damned if he went and got in too deep after what had happened the last time.

"No," he said, "we can't. How would you do it, man? Wikileaks it? What credit would we get for that? We sell this, we publish it, without the state's go-ahead, we go to prison. _I_," he swept his arms across the table, "am not going to prison."

Akemi's eyes glinted viciously in the darkness, making Iori shudder. He had picked the wrong guy to go up against. Then, as quickly as it had come, the spurned expression had gone, and Akemi was grinning at them, the wolfish grin Iori had come to expect. It made him feel much calmer.

"Yes!" Midori cheered, heartily clapping Iori on the back. He held back the sudden rush of euphoria, resisting the urge to throw up all over her. "I knew...well, I thought...I hoped I could count on you to see sense, Iori!"

"Yeah," he said bitterly under his breath; both his boss and Akemi looked like they understood.

"Well, we should get some shots before we tell the police, anyway," his camera-man sighed, standing up and walking past Akemi over to the scene of what they'd come to believe had to be some messed-up stuff. Starlight filtered through the open window, past the fields and nearby river, casting an eerie, unearthly green glow ove the room; the bright yellow full moon in the sky, and the odd spatters of blood, filled Iori with dread he hadn't felt in years.

"You did the right thing, Stupei," Midori laughed, drawing his attention; he took the chance to get a good look at her relieved (and slightly proud) face, something he didn't see often, and laughed in return.

"Thanks, babe," he quipped back, and she slapped him.

Afterwards, when the stinging let up a little and the storm with Akemi had passed, Iori knelt down by his boss, still fervently recording everything he could find. The man was puffing on a cigarette held loosely in the corner of his mouth (Iori hoped that it wouldn't fall out and accidentally set the train ablaze), eyes narrowed in concentration as he pointed the camera around the compartment, never once getting sidetracked. Iori found it impressive.

"Some things don't sit right with me," the man said. Iori held his tongue, and he continued, "This doesn't look like any sort of train crash I've seen on the records before. Maintenance done properly the same morning, yet the tracks're ripped up, no one dead or missing except this one guy...and then we find this."

Iori looked up. Scorch marks he hadn't paid attention to before trailed across the wall, underneath the dried bloodstains, black and long and messy, as if a sudden flame had burned away at the metal. It was unnerving, how focused everything seemed to be, save that one trail of blood that stopped at the window.

Inspiration hit the reporter in a flash. Rising to his feet he pointed at the window, hoping his boss would get the message; then he jogged briskly in the other direction, allowing his feet to carry him outside the carriage. The others had dispersed, presumably to find a police officer, so it wasn't challenging for Iori to clamber over the couplings between the train carriages and scramble over to the window where his boss now waited, looking slightly confused.

"What is it, Iori?"

Iori didn't answer, too busy searching the long grasses for what he was sure was there, had to be there, couldn't possibly not be there. His break had come; he was surprised the others hadn't put it together first.

After the most frantic minute of his life in recent memory, Iori gave up. Scratching the top of his head (because it itched, and because he was pissed off) he sat down in the grass, then jumped back up again with a yelp. His boss looked unamused; he hoped whatever he'd sat on had been crushed, as a punishment for scaring the life out of him, then realised he couldn't hope to crush a fluid, certainly not the one he'd found – the same one he'd been looking for.

A small puddle of blood, the deepest, richest red Iori had ever seen, trickled down the side of the train, onto the bank, pooled where he had sat a minute ago, then ran down to the riverside, stopping immediately next to it. To his eyes it looked like someone had been dragged to the river after falling out the window. Perhaps the had fallen into it, and that was why the police couldn't recover the body?

Iori barely noticed his boss had already started taking pictures of his findings until a bright flash jolted him out of his thoughts, followed by several other bright flashes and the sound of shutters clicking at the same time. Alerted to the return of his colleagues, he gave them a once-over; they seemed dazed, irritated, probably ignored by the police, judging by their earlier conduct and the sour looks on their faces.

"They laughed at us," Midori croaked. Iori put his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort, but she shrugged it off, eyes still trained on the bloodied dirt. Her trigger finger idly tapped the 'capture' button on her digital camera. Iori assumed she was itching to carry on filming after their little interlude. "Said without evidence, they ain't moving. Think we're trying to cheat them, muscle in on their crime scene."

"Why didn't you show them the pictures you already have?"

"They wouldn't look."

"Told you! Good-for-nothing law enforcement pricks," the sight of Akemi's fists clenching as he spoke turning Iori's blood cold, "think they're better than us. I say we destroy all the evidence, show them what's up."

"And lose any chance we have of getting our exclusive because we tampered with a fucking crime scene?" Midori fired back. "I thought that's what you wanted, you selfish bastard glory-hunter. Well, we got it now, that's for sure, so why don't we clear out? Leave the rest to the good ol' boys in blue?"

"I think it's safe to say we can surmise what happened here," the biggest man said, wrapping an arm around Iori's shoulders. The warmth of the gesture was comforting, and he apologised quietly for never bothering to learn the man's name. "This kid, the one they think is dead, must have crawled out the window and fallen into the river. End of story."

"With the amount of blood he lost? I don't think so!" Akemi's growl was murderous. "What about all the other shit we found? What if he got dragged out, man? How do you think someone who's already been wounded, lost enough blood to fill a fucking bathtub, pulls themselves out a window after a train crash? Hell, opens it, even?"

"What if it was already open?"

"Then his fucking blood wouldn't be smeared all over the thing!" Akemi countered. The big guy grunted noncommittally. "We got everything we need. Clear up the scene, then sell the info on, fence it like the shady motherfuckers we should be. No rules, no regrets. It'll make its way to the police eventually."

"Again with the crime! What is with you, Akemi?" Iori had never seen Midori as angry before in his life. He was glad he'd chosen to side with her. "We're journalists. J, O, U, R, N, A, L, I, S, T, S. Not the fucking Yakuza! What, do we suddenly have connections now?"

"Yeah," Akemi said, locked in a furious glaring match with Midori. "I know a guy-"

"Oh, you know a guy? You _know _a guy?" The emphasis the woman of the group put on 'know' terrified Iori, more than he cared to admit, and he felt the arm around him clamp tighter. Whether like a shield or a vice, he didn't know. "Listen to this! Akemi _knows _a guy! Who knows a guy! Who knows a guy who knows a guy! Look at all those connections right there!" She held a finger up to the man's face accusingly, but he didn't move, still watching her intensely. "That means nothing! You've got nothing! We are not," finger drawn across her throat in a threatening manner, "throwing ourselves to the fucking dogs because _you know a guy_! You got that, Akemi-kun?"

When Iori heard Midori say 'Akemi-kun' in the same sickly-sweet, insulting tone she did Stupei, Bossman or Largo Large (where she'd come up with that one, he didn't know; perhaps the big guy's name was Largo, or Large), he knew the trouble he could feel brewing was about to go down. He ducked out of the big man's grip, dodged the arm that reached out to pull him back, and stood himself between the two, rapidly casting glances at each of them. They didn't stand down, but their anger felt like it had defused a little; he could work with that.

"Enough, guys!" he shouted, a mixture of relief and pride swelling in his heart when they backed off ever so slightly. "Cool down a little. We have our proof, we'll take it to the police, let them deal with it, then we'll publish first. Does that make you two happy? It's all we're after, right?"

Akemi hung his head, as Midori crossed her arms. Iori watched them both, waiting for...something, he wasn't sure what; when it looked like they'd cooled off, he decided he was pleased.

"Now what do you two idiots have to say to each other?"

"Sorry," they deadpanned in unison. Iori wasn't pleased with _that_, but he supposed it would have to do, for now. Things had settled down, tempers quelled – maybe they could make something of all these opportunities that'd fallen into their laps after all.

"Nicely done, Iori," the boss smirked. Iori could practically feel the smugness in his voice. "Perhaps you're not a total lost cause after all."

"I hope not," he retorted, grinning brightly, "'cause I'm pretty sure your ego couldn't handle working for an idiot!"

His camera-man shook his head, exasperated but satisfied (Iori hoped that was what those tiny curves at the corners of his mouth meant, anyway). They all waited there, silent, for a moment, before the piercing sound of Iori's rington broke through the evening air.

Flipping his phone open ('piece of old junk', he thought angrily, followed by 'cheapskate company') he answered with a husky "Yes?"

"Iori!" the voice at the other end of the line barked. Iori cringed; his real boss, the man who hired him (indentured servitude, the dark thoughts in his mind added), was a horrible sort of guy, the kind who came complete with bad toupée and soup-stained tie, the sort Iori loved to hate. He could guess why he was calling; it was always something. "Where's my exclusive? If I don't have this report on every TV in the region by tomorrow morning, you'll be out of a job, you lazy no-good-"

"Don't worry, sir," Iori replied, placatingly, "we've got everything produced and collated as you wanted, just sending it all to you now. Patience, sir!"

Iori tried not to take pride at the gruff snort he heard from the other end of the line.

"Good. Good work, Iori," the man in question cheered, "you've got us what we're after, for once. Well done."

"Thank you, sir," the reporter bowed a little out of habit, keeping his snide comments to himself as he hung up the phone. Midori looked amused; she generally had a lot of choice words for the boss, 'slave driver' and 'pig' the most common. "We're done, guys. Let's get this stuff off our hands and-"

The near-inaudible sound of a man huffing and puffing somewhere far behind him intrigued Iori. Turning around, he saw something he was uncomfortably used to in his line of work – what he assumed was a plainclothes detective flagging him and his team down.

"I don't recognise him," Midori said, puzzled. Akemi and the big guy made small sounds of agreement. "Should we go talk to him? Get this stuff off our hands, like you said?"

"I think it's best," Iori answered hastily, "just so we can get the full scoop on things ourselves, confirm what we know. If we're lucky, he'll tell us more. I hate being in the dark."

The others nodded, and together the five made their way to the man, circling around the carriage and crossing over the stepping-stones in the river, this time much less hurriedly. Iori examined him closely, when they approached him, hesitant to be the first to speak - first impressions weren't his strong suit - then realised that, despite the disastrously unfashionable fluorescent jackets they wore, there was very little light for him to see them by. He switched his torch on, the rest of the group following suit.

In the light, Iori could tell the man had probably just lived through one of the hardest days of his life. It definitely looked that way. He was wearing a beige dress shirt, red tie, dark trousers and dress shoes; he'd have looked the part of a true professional were it not for the condition of the thing, and the guy himself. Iori resisted the urge to hold his arms out and steady the guy, as he shook uncontrollably. More details became apparent after further inspection: his eyes were heavily shadowed, bloodshot, rimmed with the stains of dried, unshed tears, and his lips looked like they'd been chewed to bits. His hair was completely disheveled, shadow looking more ten-o'-clock than five-o'-clock; the way he ran his hands through his hair every couple of breaths probably explained the mess.

"Like a bird's nest," Midori sniggered. Iori did his best to hold back the sudden surge of laughter, throwing her a disapproving glance. She was unrepentant, of course.

Most fearful were the darkened coffee stains, splotchy and random, that dotted his clothes from his head to his toes. He was, as nicely as Iori could put it, as much a wreck as the train.

Surprisingly enough, even though his pained expression made him look like he was about to break under the weight of the world on his shoulders, he carried himself with pride and spoke the same way. It was almost intimidating, how sophisticated and composed his demeanour was, until Iori realised how much it clashed with his distraught appearance.

"I'm Detective Ryotaro Dojima," was the first thing he said, voice scratchy and tired but deep, elegant, almost mellifluous. Dojima shook each of their hands in turn as they delivered their own introductions, listened intently as they explained what they had done, and alternatively either asked invasively pertinent questions or offered little details about the case that helped flesh out their understanding of the situation.

"His speech patterns are more urbane than ours are," the biggest man whispered into Iori's ears. "Are we the hicks here?"

"Thank you for sharing your information so freely, Detective," his camera-man said, loudly enough to cover the big man's voice, as he glared at them both. They'd fallen out of his good books again.

"The same to you," Dojima replied, lighting up a cigarette before taking a long drag. Iori respected his hard-boiled, fifties-cop look: he was a true detective, like Raidou Kuzunoha from that one film series, or Kurosawa from his real life.

"That's it, Detective," Iori finished, after they'd shared everything they knew. Every word seemed to crush the man's already shattered spirit, but he held together quite admirably.

"Can I ask you all to do something for the Inaba Police Department, as personal favours to us?" he said, lighting up yet another cigarette. Iori hadn't had Dojima pegged as much of a chain smoker, but he changed his mind as soon as the guy finished a pack in five minutes. That was pretty damn cool. Very fifties-cop-show-esque.

"What is it, Detective?" Midori's tone was guarded. Iori didn't understand why.

"You've supplied me with all the evidence," he patted his pocket, "and I'm grateful for that. I also apologise for the conduct of my subordinates earlier, but unfortunately I couldn't do anything, as I was dealing with the backlash of the incident within the department at the time." The five nodded appreciatively. Who better than this man to deal with the inevitable political flak? "So far I've tried to keep the news under wraps in this area. Could you make sure you don't report this in? We're having enough trouble recovering from the particularly high-profile serial killings, as you probably know. Any more incidents'll put this region's economy in jeopardy, considering how much tourism we've already lost."

Iori flinched. He couldn't quite find the words. His colleagues were equally speechless, each finding some way to dodge the question...he supposed the duty of putting the final nail in Inaba's coffin fell to him.

"See, we kinda already sent everything in..."

"What?" Dojima's reaction would have been priceless, were it not for the magnitude of the situation. "When?"

"About twenty-five minutes ago," Akemi confessed, plucking up the courage to speak. He regretted it almost as soon as Dojima laid eyes on him.

"I can try calling my superior, if it helps," Iori said. Hope sparked in Dojima's eyes, a tiny shred of it, but nonetheless there, and different. He didn't look lost, or dead, and that looked good on the guy, Iori had to admit. "Just give me a moment..."

Dojima nodded, and waited patiently for a few minutes until Iori's employer picked up.

"What is it, Iori? It's late, I'm tired, and I'm about to go home for the day-"

"The police have requested a media blackout on the train wreck story in this region, sir." The six of them gathered by the river could practically hear the man gawping on the other side. After a while, he spoke.

"Tell 'em it's too late."

Dojima, in an unlikely twist, grabbed the phone, even paler than before.

"Why?" he yelled down the line. "Don't tell me you've already-"

"No," the reporter's boss cut in, "we didn't. Not yet, anyway. Turns out another reporting crew somehow managed to get in and out before we did, with more information, unlikely as it sounds. I can try not running my company's report in your region, spread the word, but..."

"...but now the game is on," Dojima mumbled. Iori swore he'd never heard anyone sound so depressed, not even his friends who'd lost family, not if you excluded when-

He cut that train of thought off at the source, concentrating his mind on Dojima, who looked completely heartbroken. Strangely enough, Midori did too; Iori didn't think he had a hope of understanding why. Slowly, freeing his phone from the detective's grasp, he dismissed his employer and hung up.

"Dojima-san," Midori said, full of sympathy. "Is everything alright?" His camera-man motioned for her to keep her mouth shut.

"No," he mumbled after a pregnant pause. "You can all leave now, if you're done. I need...need to make a phone call."

They looked at each other and nodded; the detective likely needed to get back to work, and their work was already done.

"Time to clock out," Akemi sighed as they walked away from the detective. Iori looked back over his shoulder, out of concern for the guy, but he was crouched down by the river, one hand trailing weakly in its flow while the other held a phone up to his ear. Midori lagged behind them, eyes focused on the man, but Iori knew she wouldn't do much more than she already had; when she'd tried to comfort him (who knows why, Iori had said, though he was fairly sure he did), he'd waved her off. She'd been disappointed, but it didn't matter, because they all understood something was wrong, something had very nearly broken Dojima that day, something that they didn't understand. Not without information.

As they climbed into their car, parked haphazardly in a lay-by on the side of the road, Iori glanced over to the river. Dojima wasn't there anymore, a trail of footprints leading off in the direction of the other police officers, and Midori was still walking up the embankment, head held low, hands jammed in pockets as she shuffled towards them.

Iori pulled out of the car and walked over to her. She was still intent on ignoring him, but he stood in front of her, holding his arms out and grabbing her when she tried to barge past.

"What's up? Why are you in a mood all of a sudden?"

"Why do you think?" she growled back. "Didn't you see him? The guy was devastated!"

"Yeah, but it's not our problem. We did everything we could, right?" Midori's face fell. Iori sighed, knowing what was coming next. "We did, Midori. Don't even try to deny it. What else can we do?"

"I don't know, we can..." she cut off, a faint pink tinging her cheeks. "He was cute, and he was sad. We could've done something, right?"

"I don't know, Midori, honestly. I wish we could, but we got nothing. We just met the guy, right?"

Silence stretched on into the quiet of the night, no crickets chirping, cars roaring, only the slight sound of the river lapping at the shore beneath their feet, underneath the bridge. It was almost peaceful.

"Yeah, I guess," she admitted, having the decency to look shameful. "But he was so cute! Come on, Stupei, you know I'm a really empathetic girl. How could I help myself with a guy like that?"

"A guy who's probably old enough to be your dad, Midori," he snickered back, scrambling away from her lunging grasp. "One of those old people fetishists, huh? How were you planning to make him like you, anyway? Those crocodile tears?"

"Crocodile tears? I'll show you crocodile tears, you...you..." Midori stopped, fuming. Iori jumped into the free passenger seat in the car, locking the door; the others were all going over their footage, except Akemi, who had leaned over the big guy's shoulder and was now poking him repeatedly. Iori gave him a thumbs-up; Akemi high-fived him back. The other three sighed together, before the camera-man started the car and they drove away.

When, on the trip back to Iwatodai, Iori put together that Dojima may have been related to the single casualty of the incident, after a great deal of research on the internet, he wished he'd handled the situation with more tact. The others were understandably silent.

* * *

When Chisato had died, he'd been truly devastated. Nothing he had ever felt, before that, had hit him quite as hard; very few things did after, save the minutes when they'd all thought Nanako had died. He was sure nothing would ever be as hard, as empty, or as pointless, as living life after that. Luckily, when Chisato had died, only she had been physically, tangibly harmed, and he'd thanked the gods his wife had worshipped for at least that little mercy, even if they saw fit to take her away from him and his daughter. He'd vowed to hunt down the bastard that had killed her, torn apart his family, and bring him (or her, he had to remember that after the last 'sexism in the workplace' training course they'd made everyone in the department take) to justice, something he had only begun to regret within the last year. For so long he'd slaved over the case, losing sight of what truly mattered – Nanako, his family, the life he'd left behind – for the sake of petty revenge. He'd believed in his delusions of grandeur, and stupidly valued them above his own daughter.

One day, he'd gone with Nanako to pick his punk nephew up from the train station, another come-and-go family member, and that same punk kid, driven and brilliant, pure and wholehearted, had cut through the fog that had come to rule his life like a blade of light and truth. Going to the station that day, meeting his sister as a boy, because that was what Souji was, undoubtedly, with tiny bits of her husband thrown into the mixture, had changed his life in a way that could only be described as necessary, necessary and wonderful. His stagnation, Nanako's loneliness, their family's quiet destruction, this boy, far too much like his overbearing mother, had simply torn away. Whether it be his nosiness, his concern, his good nature or his delicious cooking, _something _in him had brought Chisato's spirit back into the house, and fixed him and Nanako – because there had been a lot wrong with them before, dancing around each other like fireflies but never really coming into contact.

He'd known things would have to change eventually, that paradise would come to an end; Souji had to go back to his parents (who valued the boy as much as he and Nanako did, clearly, with the way they called so much, so often, which could only be their way of smothering the poor boy), Nanako would grow up, their family would have to grow someday. Even if only to include Souji's huge web of friends, fans and admirers, who relied on him as much as they did, before things got too ridiculous.

What he hadn't known, hadn't expected, hadn't ever even considered, was the possibility that something would _happen_ to Souji to tear him away from them abruptly, never to be returned. That he'd just...go. It may have been selfish, but he'd seen Souji as his own kid (and occasionally, kid brother), albeit an exceptional one with a penchant for therapy, and he'd never intended to let him go. They were family. Family doesn't let family go alone, and Souji had been the one to teach him that.

The call had seemed innocent enough, probably related to the murder cases (this was something he'd have to keep from Adachi, because as much as he still didn't want to accept that his old partner was a murderer with a grudge, he always came across as far too interested in the boy's affairs), he'd assumed when he'd seen the caller ID on the ringing phone. Alarm bells had begun to go off in his head when he'd heard the news from one of the other officers, but he'd already sent Souji off, seen his train leave in the early morning, so it couldn't have been that one. He'd smoothed things over as best he could at the station, with the prefectural police, and felt pretty confident when he learned there had, so far, been no casualties and fairly few real injuries. Financial loss, sabotage, property damage, even of trains, he could deal with – things didn't matter, not compared to people.

Then the news began trickling in, then streaming, then flooding: conflicting accounts of the events (whether there really was an assailant, or maybe the driver had just been mad, heavily intoxicated, or both), the appearance of evidence that suggested the _possibility _that there _may have been _sabotage, the wronged suing for perceived damages. It had all done his head in. And then, amidst all the insignificant hurt feelings, and the significant hurt bodies, was a little, innocuous note that said 'One passenger has been announced missing', later recanted to say 'Souji Seta is missing'. The identification had taken a while, with the records being so confused as they were, but when that knowledge finally made it to Dojima's ears, all hell had broken loose. Dojima had smashed a mug over his supervisor's head during a bout of white hot rage and pure disbelief, and things had started going downhill from there.

They kept it to themselves at the station; because Dojima asked for it that way, because so much of the town loved Souji, because he had been crucially involved in the closure of the murder cases and, hell, just because, but Dojima knew it wouldn't stay that way forever. When the news leaked, things would go to hell. So, he'd gone out to the scene, hoping to speak to the broadcast crew that had supposedly set up shop there, peeking into things best left alone, but that had been fruitless, for, well, reasons he found pretty flimsy. If another crew had finished up so damn quickly, how come no one had seen them? How had they done it? His detective's intuition screamed at him that there was _more _here, more to it than what he already knew, but that voice was drowned out by the one that screamed at him to get the bastards that killed his nephew, the same voice that had driven him to despair after Chisato's death – _murder_.

His attention drawn back to the phone held in his hands, the line which had fallen quiet after the third ring, he ended the call disappointedly. He'd had no luck trying to get Nanako on the phone so far, and the news was about to start...he had to keep her away from it at all costs. She couldn't suffer the same way he did, not at her age, not when she'd already lived her life for so long without her mother, with a shoddy imitation of a father. It'd kill her and him both.

When his phone buzzed without warning in his pocket as he trudged towards the rest of the police officers stationed at the scene of the crash, he fought the desire to ignore the call. Maybe it was all a dream, and he just had to wake up; Nanako would be laughing and screaming as Souji chased her around the house, tickled her to tears, cooked with her, taught her, used his little magic tricks just to put a smile on her face, and then, when she went to bed, they'd talk about whatever came to mind: school, work, women, life in general. He'd be happy again, content with his closest friend being his kid brother (nephew!)and the life that he led. If he just pinched himself hard enough, his eyes would open.

On the sixth ring, Dojima answered the call. His gruff greeting was met with an awkward pause, followed by an impossibly perky, joyous shout of "Dad!", the sound melting through the walls he'd worked so hard to put up. It hurt; he needed those to keep her safe, hold her outside of reality's reach.

"Hi, honey," he said, fighting a mixture of fear, regret, sadness and relief that welled up in his throat, threatening to spill outwards. "How are you?"

"I'm okay, Dad," she chirped back. "I just got back from Junes with all of Big Bro's friends! I was in the bathroom, so I missed your first call. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise, Nanako," he said, almost smiling at the note of embarrassment in her voice. He could do it, he could tell her, he-

"Oh, Dad, the news is starting!" The rush of static noise before a medley of voices started speaking in the background brought Dojima crashing back to reality, reminding him of _why_ he was calling his daughter so impatiently late at night, and he had to bite his tongue to hold back a barrage of curses.

"Nanako, turn the TV off, right now!"

"But Dad, I'm so bored, and it's just the news-"

"Right now, Nanako, turn it off!" Dojima heard the young girl moan loudly in frustration, followed by the sound of her shuffling around the table to pick up the remote. Just as she squealed in a way that Dojima was sure meant she'd got it, all the noise ceased. "Nanako?"

"Why is Big Bro on the news, Dad?"

Dojima felt like tearing his hair out and crying at the same time.

"Turn it off, Nanako, right now!"

There was no answer to his manic roaring for a moment, apart from the buzz of barely-audible background noise. Dojima held his breath – Nanako was a smart girl, but there was no _real _evidence for it so far, so they wouldn't possibly say he was 'presumed dead', would they?

A sudden gasp, loud and tearful and wet, followed by an ear-splitting shriek and the click-clack of plastic tumbling to the floor was his answer, and it tore Dojima's heart out. The sobbing that followed was muffled, but no less potent in its effects on Dojima.

"Nanako? Nanako?" He bellowed, but the only responses were shrill tears and the clatter of footsteps away from the phone. "Answer me, Nanako! Damnit, Nanako, come back here! Nanako! NANAKO!"


	3. Chapter 2: The Long Journey Home

_Forgive me for the lateness of this update. My muse, she is a fickle wench, sultry in her...something or the other. Meanie. ;_; Otherwise, again, thanks for all the wonderful comments, the great reception, and all that stuff! Please continue to make me feel good about my writing, and please try not to hate this chapter too much. Just hate it about as much as I do. :D_

_Also, hate the comma, the semi-colon, the hyphen, and the full stop. Those bastards. ;P _

_PS. I could use a beta reader! If any readers are willing to help me out, that'd be nice. I don't want to approach a stranger. Pleaaaase? :D

* * *

_

**The Long Journey Home**

Dojima's car was refusing to start.

Why was it refusing to start? Why had it picked now, of all the times he'd used it, all the years he'd owned it, all the occasions he'd driven it into walls, to play around, behaving like a petulant child? He needed to move fast, damn it, needed to get to Nanako, and it refused to budge an inch, no movement whatsoever besides the shuddering engine.

After Nanako had hung up on him, Dojima had fallen out of the real world, into some hazy, dreamlike land of possibilities, and certainly not good ones. His feet, thankfully, had known where to go, why they needed to go there, and how to get there, but the rest of him was stuck, floundering uselessly in a mire of fear, regret, sorrow, and anger: all the things he'd thought he'd finally moved past. It was almost funny, how one little incident, one death, could take him right back to square one, alone, cold, and afraid, but he shrugged it off, more content to suffer later rather than at such an important moment.

Calling the house again had proven just as fruitless as thinking about...well, anything, really. No one had answered the first, second, or third calls; when he'd tried a fourth, hesitant to hope that Nanako would finally come to the phone so he could speak to her, assuage her fears just a little bit, the phone had picked up, but it had been a pointless effort. He hadn't been able to get a word past his daughter's breathless rasping. When the noise stopped, and the line went dead, he felt very much grateful for the little blessing that he didn't have to try anymore, didn't have to hear anymore, because every sob hammered the realisation that this was real and _not_ some twisted nightmare into the cracks in his heart, tearing it further into two.

"Dojima-san?" said a fearful, quivering voice, muted somewhat, followed by two light taps on the window of his car. Looking outwards with as much anger as he could muster, he rolled the window down, fixing a glare on the nervous rookie on the other side.

"What is it?" he snapped. The rookie recoiled a bit, sniffing, but Dojima managed to make his glare even more intimidating, somehow, and the rookie launched into a stream of incomprehensible words. When Dojima snapped his fingers, grabbing the other's attention, he stiffened, straightened up, and saluted.

"I noticed your car isn't working properly, sir!" he began. Dojima gestured as if to say 'get to the point'; the rookie appeared taken aback for a moment before he continued. "If your car isn't working, sir, please feel free to use mine!"

"The car's fine!" the senior detective yelped, twisting the key in the ignition. The car itself roared to life, then sputtered erratically for a moment, before completely giving up, cutting out with a pronounced wail. He banged his hands on the dashboard, cursing. "Just needs a moment. It'll be fine."

"Do you have a moment, sir?" the rookie detective questioned, an innocent expression on his face. Dojima forced himself to relax; it wasn't insubordination, the kid was just asking a question, and anyway, he was right. He was wasting time he didn't have. Awfully perceptive for a rookie; it reminded him a little of Souji.

Pulling his keys out of the ignition and stripping the ring of all the keys he needed for personal use, Dojima undid his seatbelt and opened the door, lifting himself out of the car. The rookie pinched the leftover keys out of his hand and dangled them in the air, the metallic jingle a strong contrast with the murmur of chatter that surrounded them, before replacing them with another, much smaller set. Cuffs, station and car, he supposed, just like every other rookie cop.

"I'll take 'car' of this, sir!" was the last thing Dojima heard from the kid as he stormed away from his piece-of-crap, junk, worthless car. He contemplated firing the rookie for the pun, then pushed that thought aside, focusing on the path in front of him – the other officers, seniors in their own right, cleared the way for him, careful not to draw his attention after seeing how obviously angry he was. He was glad of that, at least.

Checking the inscription on the car key told him it belonged to a battered old scrap heap from the first fleet. That was irritating enough (he'd expected something shiny and new, that at least tried to give the impression that it worked the way it was meant to), but he brushed his concerns aside as he approached it, thankful that he had an option at all. The senior officers hadn't been particularly willing to help him out. The officer leaning on the bonnet, nonchalant as usual, was an old acquaintance, maybe even a friend, who'd joined the force years ago; longtime chain-smoker, even longer boy racer. If he'd picked the scrap heap, it had to be good for something.

"Dojima-san," the man nodded as Dojima jabbed the key into the lock and turned it as harshly as he could. He tried not to look the smoker in the eye; he could have used a smoke himself, and the tantalising way the man blew puffs of smoke into the air was cruel as can be.

"Mind getting off my car?" the door needed to be yanked open, and the detective felt the strain of the action shoot through his arms. He was getting too old for this.

"Your car?" the irritating smirk on the other officer's face grated on Dojima's nerves, reminding him why the guy was an acquaintance, not a friend. "Isn't your car the one my partner just drove off in?"

"It was," he shot back, not meeting the other's eyes. "Now this one is. Move it."

"'Please' is a nice word, sir," his aggressor sneered. The gloating look on his face made Dojima want to smash it in, but he chose not to think about that, instead latching on to what the other had mentioned in passing – that his car had moved. How had the rookie done that?

Keeping his silence, Dojima sat down in the driver's seat, hastily clicking the clip of his seatbelt into place.

"In a hurry, Dojima-san?"

Dojima glanced over at the cop who had chosen to settle into the passenger seat, one arm held loosely outside the open window, the other lazily dragging a half-finished cigarette to his lips. He resisted the oh-so-irresistible urge to snatch the thing from the man's hands and finish it himself as he kick-started the engine, revving it into life.

"What are you doing, Mitsuda?" He felt like ripping his hair out, the anger in him finally reaching boiling point. He leaned across to plant his face directly in front of the other's, placing one hand on the clutch while the other balled into a fist. "I'm going home. Why are you in this car, harassing me?"

"Ryotaro-san, you know someone'll have to bail you out when you crash this car. Look at you, you're shaking! How were you planning to get home?"

"In a car," he retorted, "and don't call me Ryotaro. You haven't got the right. Listen to me," he shook his head, hoping he'd get through to the guy, "I need to get home now. My daughter, she..."

Mitsuda picked up where Dojima trailed off.

"Needs her dad, right?" he quipped. Dojima tried not to look too impressed, at least not beyond believable sarcasm. "So get driving. I'll handle anything that needs handling."

Dojima grunted. He hoped it'd convey his heartfelt thanks. Mitsuda, much as he might have been an idiot, was right – he was far too frantic, too energetic, to be driving, let alone driving alone.

"You're welcome," Mitsuda grinned. Dojima tried to do the same, but it came out as more of a half-smile than anything else. He felt more like rubbing the cocky look off the other man's face. "Now, what are we waiting for?"

* * *

"One-hundred-fifty is way too much for this pile of scrap, Dojima-san! You need to slow down!"

Dojima ignored the advice. It'd be much easier to claim he didn't catch Mitsuda's screams of terror later, considering the wind bellowing at them through both of the open windows in the front of the car dominated his hearing. On either side of them cars streaked past like bolts of lightning, blurs of colour that promptly faded into the background behind them, as the stars twinkled above their heads in the night sky. If they'd been on a pleasure trip, trying to appreciate the beauty and splendour of it all, the entire journey would have been an unforgettable experience, speed and sound blending the outside world into one blanket of darkness and mystery interspersed with points of shifting, shimmering light. Instead, they both felt sick. Holding their gazes forward, making sure to keep their eyes firmly set on the road as they weaved between obstacles, trying to read the names of the exits posted on the signs, was nightmarish in its intensity. Added to the siren screeching noisily on the roof of the car, they were living only a maniac's dream, other cars swerving hard to avoid the moving deathtrap.

As they closed both of their windows (promising themselves they'd never open them again, in all their coming years), their thoughts drifted back to training, years ago, when they'd been taught that driving at high speeds with the windows down was a no-no. Neither of them disagreed now.

"Next exit, Dojima-san, and hit the brakes!"

"I know, I know!" Slamming his feet down on the centre pedal, Dojima spun the steering wheel counter-clockwise and prayed with all his might. As the car zoomed into the left lane, then onto the slip-road, he felt gravity loosen its grip on him, letting him pull away from the chair, and he sighed. He really had been driving like a maniac. On his left, Mitsuda was panting, probably from motion sickness. One clammy hand pressed down on his forehead, covered in a thin film of sweat. He fought the urge to smirk back when the man beamed cheekily at him; at least they still had their lives, and they'd stopped arguing now, cruising down the road at a leisurely one-hundred-ten.

"Never had you pegged for a racer, Dojima-san," Mitsuda said, tone light and airy, "didn't seem crazy enough. I take it back now, though."

"I don't race," Dojima quipped, feeling some of the strength he'd lost return to his body. His mind clearing a little – Nanako still captivated his thoughts, but the adrenaline that kept the damn creeping depression away made sure he felt alive and aware, more than he had in a long time. "I drive. I'm a detective."

"I'm jealous, myself," the younger officer chuckled, taking a long drag on a new cigarette. Dojima was sure the other had gone out the window during the first leg of the drive. "If I could move one of these things like you, I'd never have joined the force."

"You learn, when you get involved in as many chases as I do." Hands bustled around the buttons on the dashboard, switching on the car's full beam headlights, among other things. A light drizzle had begun to fall, piercing the cloud cover that had started to move in, so he switched the windscreen wipers on too. Couldn't afford to get complacent.

"Pull up for a second, need to get my bearings." That had been Mitsuda. Dojima immediately dismissed the idea.

"I know where we're going, and we don't have time to stop. About four kilometres ahead there's a turn-off that'll take us straight onto the main road through Inaba. That's the one we want."

"You sure, Dojima-san?"

"Positive. I make this journey all the time."

The younger officer leaned back in his seat, satisfied.

"Just needed to be sure you were still on the ball, Dojima-san. Can't have you losing it on me now, can I?"

Dojima huffed, eyes narrowing as he stared forward. The weather had taken a very quick turn for the worst, now-heavy rain pounding away at the windshield; he flipped the wipers up to their highest setting and tried not to let the headlights from the nearby cars dazzle him.

There was silence in the car for a while as they drew closer to the exit. Mitsuda was carefully scanning something on his phone, reaching out every now and then to press a button or flick his finger across the screen; Dojima tried not to let the fancy little toy take too much of his attention away from the driving he was supposed to be doing.

"Well," Mitsuda sighed, pocketing the phone and sending a chill down Dojima's spine, "I just got a text from an associate in the traffic department I contacted earlier, when you were trying to kill us both." Dojima let that one go. He probably needed to hear this. "They've blockaded the main roads. Some idiot, they think he was drunk, stumbled out onto the street and got himself hit. With all the people staying in Inaba after the train crash, and this shit on top, they're having trouble coping with the traffic."

That was a lesson he'd remember for the future, why he needed to stop drinking. It didn't help that now he was distracted, fury rising in his stomach.

"What the-"

"Focus, Dojima-san!"

Another car whizzed by, this one dangerously close, honking its horn angrily. It took everything the older detective had not to lean out the window and shake his fist at it.

"Don't worry, Dojima-san. I'll pull some strings, get us through. I just need you to drive."

"Right, right," he replied, hands clamped tightly around the wheel. Mitsuda laid his own gloved hand on his shoulder; the gesture was oddly comforting.

"If it helps, Dojima-san, I can take the wheel."

"And let you plough straight through the blockade? Not a chance."

A warm smile, followed by a hearty laugh, told Dojima he'd won that one.

"I guess you're right!" The hand left his shoulder, but the friendly action had done its work; he felt a great deal more relaxed. Nanako needed him to be calm. "Doesn't mean we won't be barging through anyway, though. Who knows if I can get us past?"

"You should!" Dojima steered the car off the road, into the exit, lights still flashing, siren still blaring. As other cars raced back towards the highway they left, moving to fill the spot they'd left empty, he glimpsed another array of flashing lights ahead, a small group of people huddled indistinctly in the darkness surrounding the glimmer in the centre of the road. Police cars were parked haphazardly around them, a makeshift barrier if he'd ever seen one. Shapes occasionally appeared in the darkness before melding back into it, people bustling around, trying to get their jobs done; he wondered if they'd yet had time to put up something more professional, or if they simply hadn't cared enough to bother.

Slowing down to what felt like a crawl, they stopped just short of the large group, which split to reveal a tall, thin, bespectacled man in a traffic officer's uniform. Mitsuda rolled down his window first, sticking his hand out to wave at the officer. Dojima signalled the man to come over.

"Good evening," he drawled as he placed himself by Dojima's window, leaning on the car's bonnet. It took all of Dojima's effort not to punch him. "I understand you are Detective Ryotaro Dojima?"

"Hey, Ishimori!" Mitsuda shouted, still waving energetically from his side of the car. "Let us through! We're in a real big hurry here!"

"Is it not possible for you to take an alternate route?"

Dojima suppressed a growl.

"No," Mitsuda hastily supplied, watching Dojima grit his teeth tightly, "it's not. I need you and your officers to move, now, or I swear I'll-"

"I'm afraid you don't have the clearance to pass, Officer Mitsuda," the man replied casually, mouth bared in a feral smile. "Not without permission from a superior. My orders come specifically from the top."

"The state police?" Mitsuda snarled. "Because if not, we're well within our power-"

"I'm afraid that my orders come from the prefectural police. I highly doubt your authority supersedes theirs, Mitsuda-san."

"What?" the officer in question spluttered. "You bastard! All we need is a favour! Help us out here!"

"I am deeply sorry, but that simply isn't possible-"

Dojima couldn't restrain himself any longer, no longer really thinking clearly. He reached out to grab Ishimori by the scruff of his neck, yanking the sallow-faced officer down to eye level. Ishimori quaked a little at the detective's seething fury, quickly turning into a yelp of fear when Dojima's eyes met his.

"You listen to me, you little punk," Dojima spat. Ishimori's legs trembled beneath him. "My orders, as Head Detective of the police department, take precedence over any other orders you may have, even if the emperor himself gives them, especially when it comes to my daughter!" His grip on the officer's collar tightened, then loosened slightly, as Dojima collected himself, before continuing. "I swear, either you move these damn idiots, or each of you will be out of a job before I'm done. You hear me?"

The man in glasses nodded meekly, terrified into easy submission. Dojima congratulated himself; clearly, the years of living peacefully hadn't cost him his touch.

"Yes, sir!" Ishimori stuttered, jumping back up to his feet as soon as Dojima let go of his shirt. He ran over to the others, shouting orders; within minutes the barricade had been cleared, the two policemen in the car sailing along the empty streets.

"You haven't lost it, Dojima-san," Mitsuda crowed. The older detective responded with a wry little smile. "I remember when you caught me and my gang. We didn't ever get together again after that. It was why I joined the force, if you recall."

"I do," the older officer said, "and just like I told you then, a little fear goes a long way." The younger officer nodded in agreement. "My senpai taught me that."

"I'll keep that in mind," Mitsuda said, lips thinning into a small frown. Dojima felt a little of his good mood seep away, but he chose to ignore it, focusing his attention back on the road. His house, his daughter, would be right around the next corner-

"Hey!" the two men cried in unison, as something bleary dashed past them in front. Dojima slammed on the brakes, barely managing to avoid colliding with it; whatever it was carried on unaware, quickly disappearing from view.

"Stupid..." Mitsuda groaned, rubbing his temples as he hung his head between his legs. Dojima didn't know what to make of it. Whatever it'd been, it was gone now, and they were lucky to be alive, so he slowly put the car back into motion, careful of anything else that might threaten to smash into them and turn them into pulp. "No lights, high speed, blurry, without even taking the time to slow down at a crossroads? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Coulda killed us!"

"We're not dead," Dojima said, voice flat and deadpan. "Be thankful for that, I suppose."

"Yeah..." Mitsuda frowned. "I guess. Holy shit, what was that, anyway? Did we just have a near-death experience?"

"Probably a car," the snarl that escaped Dojima's throat animal in its intensity, "some drunken moron with a death wish. Just forget about it."

"Right, right...where's your house, Dojima-san?"

Both of them were still rather frazzled, but Dojima pointed it out as they turned the corner onto his road. Mitsuda, apparently, understood what he meant, as he shook his head and began unbuckling his seat-belt. Dojima pulled the car over and killed the engine; the two shared a meaningful look.

"Go," Mitsuda said graciously, and Dojima took it as his cue, stepping gracefully out of the car before rushing over to the door. He fumbled with his own keys, loose in his pocket, for a short moment, then found the one he was looking for and jammed it into the door.

The sound of an engine roaring to life grabbed his attention, and he turned sharply, only to catch Mitsuda waving as the car drove away, towards the other end of town. Inwardly he thanked the other officer; immature, snarky, and irritating as he tended to be, he'd been nothing but helpful tonight, both cooperative and compassionate. It was a nice change, maybe even a lifesaver. Dojima was sure he would have snapped without someone he could rely on there to back him up. Perhaps he'd have to get him a gift, or recommend the younger man for a well-deserved promotion.

As he pushed the door open, Dojima gave the inside of his home a quick once-over. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, besides the obvious absence of Souji's possessions (shoes, coat, umbrella), the boy's trademarks (discarded sweet wrappers, used clothes, unwashed pots and pans scattered around the sink, books on the table, all the usual suspects) and the noise of the TV, static mixed with irregular beeping. The thing must have needed retuning. He made a mental note of that, for Nanako's benefit later, as he walked forward, taking further account of the state of the downstairs floor of his home.

The phone had been carelessly left on the floor, blaring the tune he recognised as meaning it was off the hook; he returned it to its cradle, knowing every moment he spent downstairs was a wasted opportunity to go _up_stairs and comfort his daughter. The upper floor itself was bathed in darkness, so he switched the lights on, the bulb on the landing swiftly shining down the stairs, brightly illuminating the rest of the house. As he laid the remote on the table, using it to switch the faulty TV off, he noticed a trail of dried tears, almost inconspicuous but definitely, unmistakably _there_, leading up the stairs. There was only one place Nanako would have gone...in retrospect, it was foolish to think she'd be anywhere else.

Despite doing everything he could to stay quiet, trying to spread his weight rather than condense it into points, the steps still creaked loudly underneath him. The noise made him anxious, some sort of bad omen, likely trying to show him how terrible an idea this was, being there with his daughter when he should have been working on the case, but he didn't stop, not even as he gently swung open the door to what had, earlier that day, been Souji's room.

The whispers of tears that floated into his ears spoke volumes about how tired Nanako must have been. The futon had been unrolled, but Nanako wasn't on it; no, she was perched precariously on the edge of Souji's couch, curled up into a little ball as she swayed back and forth, shivering uncontrollably. On the table in front of her was the Iwatodai Lamp Souji had bought as a gift on his school trip, shining wickedly in the low light.

The room's curtains were drawn apart, the window wide open; lamplight filtered in from the street, through the gaps, carried on a chill night-time breeze that stung the surface of his skin. Leaning over the pillows that had been slung on the floor, he shut the window, a last gust of air flowing over him as he closed the curtains. The only source of light left in the room was Nanako's prized lamp, so he turned on the other lamps, making sure to keep his eyes on Nanako, who had now stilled, her face staring intently at the ground.

She remained still until he sat down next to her, crossing her arms moodily when he put his around her shoulder. That didn't stop her from leaning into his touch, desperate for comfort; he held her there for as long as he could, trying not to let his own tumultuous emotions get the better of him when he needed to be strong for his little girl.

Time passed. Dojima wasn't sure how long (it trickled away like water, impossible to hold in your hands forever, more slipping through your fingers the tighter you tried to grip), but after a while, Nanako relaxed into him, lying across his lap as she shed even more tears. It surprised him that she had so many to cry, considering the life she'd found herself living.

He ran his hands through her hair, not knowing any other way to console her. It was long, thick, soft as silk, the same as her mother's. She seemed to enjoy the attention, so he carried on holding her, undoing the knots in her hair with his fingers, rubbing circles in her scalp. They were each other's anchors, after all.

Neither of them spoke. Whether afraid to break the silence, and in doing so, come back to reality, or simply because they were content together, father and daughter, he didn't know. He was certainly content to stay there, holding his flesh and blood, letting her know that she was all that mattered, and for once – he supposed she wasn't as strong as she wanted to be yet – she let him, happy to absorb all the love he had to give. When Nanako finally decided to face the truth, with a loud sniffle and a proud façade as he was so used to, he would be right there with her.

"Dad," she said, voice cracking under the strain of sorrow, "did Big Bro go to Heaven?"

"Of course he did, Nanako," he soothed her, letting go so she could lift herself into a sitting position. She swelled with indignant pride, glaring at him like he was telling her some sort of false truth, though her eyes were lined with unshed tears. It almost broke his heart.

"He told me he'd come back and stay with us forever!" The little girl sniffed. "He said we'd get married!" She deflated a little; Dojima sympathised, again. "Why would he lie to me?"

Dojima had been there when Souji had made those promises; though they'd been joking, he'd had half a mind to make the boy keep both of them, rather than just the first. He'd later dismissed the thought, because they were cousins, and regardless of the legality of it all (also, he'd begun to entertain some sneaking suspicions about Souji, thoughts he didn't think were appropriate to share, all inarguably not conducive to his nephew marrying his _daughter_), and just that thought disturbed him. It made him shiver, made his skin crawl: no two ways about it, if Nanako wanting to be with her cousin could be avoided he'd do his utmost to make sure it was.

"He didn't choose what happened to him, honey," he sighed, "it just did. We'll never know why."

"But you're a detective!" Nanako stomped her feet in a way that was so sweet and endearing Dojima couldn't hold back his smile. "Can't you just find out? Isn't that your job?"

"I promise you, Nanako, I will." He clenched his fists, letting the rage that had been simmering in him for so long pump through his body. It was freeing, in a way that gave him back his purpose, the white-hot power that settled itself deep in his heart. He'd find out why this had happened, and when he did, he'd crush everyone involved.

"Dad," she whimpered, jolting Dojima back to awareness, "I don't wanna be alone, ever again..."

"You won't be, I promise." It was a promise he knew he couldn't keep, he neglected to include that; but at least he'd try. Nanako, to the best of his ability, would never be left alone again. Not like this.

"I want to do the best I can, for Mom and Big Bro!" Her sudden cheer, forced though it sounded, was infectious. He gave her a hug, as comforting as he could make it; she twitched a little, but held firmly onto him, head buried in his shirt, tiny arms wrapped around his shoulders. Together they were strong, and they would not weep...if Souji had taught them anything, it was that it was always best to keep moving forward, united against the future, rather than stuck in the past, in regret, fractured and alone.

Eventually, the silence turned to conversation: what they were going to have for dinner (nothing, neither of them were even remotely hungry), how their respective days had been (terrible, completely), what they were going to do tomorrow (cry more, probably), all sorts of trivial things that kept them rooted in the present. Then that turned to conversation about Souji: how they were going to tell everyone, from his parents to his friends, a funeral service, the aftermath. They reminisced, they shared, they learned; eventually that turned back to silence, as Nanako, shattered and distraught, fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep.

Dojima was about to join her, sleeping on Souji's couch, her face buried tightly in a pillow that still carried his nephew's faint, but unique, scent, when his phone rang, and what had been a comfortable, if morose, quiet turned into a cacophony.

"Dojima here. What is it?"

The other person said nothing for a moment, the line crackling intermittently.

"Detective Dojima," they began in the wake of the world's most awkward pause, "I'm calling about the incident that occurred earlier today, the local train accident. I'm sure you've been informed that the preliminary investigations being carried out earlier have just been completed?"

"So soon?" Dojima was livid. Less than a day and they'd already had the nerve to close up the investigation he was supposed to be heading? What were the prefectural police playing at? "When I left the scene, I was told that the investigation would take at least three more days, perhaps four or five, before we would be told to leave. What's changed?"

"The conflicting evidence, sir," the speaker answered. His tone was vaguely disinterested. "Some of the eyewitness accounts directly oppose each other. People sitting within reaching distance of each other in the front carriage dispute the existence of an assailant, while the physical evidence doesn't point to anything but error on the part of the driver. Even the door to the carriage, the one many claimed had been sealed, was surprisingly mobile. Nothing makes sense so far."

"So?" Now Dojima was fuming! "The purpose of a preliminary is to deal with problems that might hamper the proper investigation, like the ones you just mentioned. Who do the prefectural police think they are, kicking us out the door?"

"The prefectural police? Probably the prefectural police," the man yawned, now blatantly bored. Dojima wondered if he was one of them himself, shoved out to Inaba to strengthen their presence in the region, or maybe a hopeful trying to catch their attention. The thought made Dojima angrier. "Detective Dojima, if I recall correctly, you were a notable figure in the national security system not so long ago. Surely you know how all this works?"

Unfortunately, he was right. Dojima, before he'd settled down in the countryside, had been a prominent up-and-comer on the highest stage; back then, dog-eat-dog was the norm with high-profile cases. Very little would have changed now. The prefectural police were vultures, swooping in whenever a local force so much as squeaked in a way that suggested they might be having difficulties with a case – why should they treat this one any differently?

"What's their motive, then?" he hoped the other person interpreted him as a curious detective, rather than a trumped-up gossip, because that was how he felt asking. Any answer to the question could only be the result of rumour and speculation at this point. 'Inquisitive imaginations breed tall tales and animosity' was the mnemonic...maybe 'idle mouths are the devil's playthings' fit better.

"Well," Dojima imagined the other person leaning in and covering their mouth, like a housewife, then punished himself for thinking that way. Neither Chisato nor Souji had liked when he made assumptions about other people, or treated stereotypes as fact, even if they were justified. "I've heard that they think us hick cops aren't competent enough for the job. Just like with the Adachi case. But that's just a rumour, of course...until they hire Shirogane again."

Dojima bit his tongue, head full of unspoken curses. He'd heard it called the 'Adachi case' before, but it always caught him off guard when anyone said it; his partner's guilt still ate at his nerves, and he still felt pity for the guy, in turn. Even after...everything. The only thing he couldn't let go of was the fear he'd felt for Nanako, but Adachi hadn't told Namatame to hurt her, and that was the only thing that kept the mind-numbing anger he held towards the ex-cop in check. It didn't help that the prefectural police thought they were somehow better than them; they'd had about as much luck with the murders as the Inaba police, muddled and confusing as the case was. In fact, it'd taken a group of plucky young kids to sort that one out.

That reminded him. Doing everything he could not to let his thoughts wander, Dojima continued.

"What about the blood in the carriage the reports mentioned?"

"There were problems getting samples, sir."

"What?" Dojima's blood started boiling again. "Why?"

"Nearly all of it, inside the carriage, had been cleaned up by the time we got the equipment over there. No traces, anywhere. Was it ever even there?"

Dojima felt his hands tense around the phone. He'd seen the pictures, seen the proof that _something _had happened there, indisputable proof that there had been some sort of violent attack on the occupant of that carriage. If it was Souji's, he needed to know. What could possibly have happened?

"I was given evidence that there was blood in that carriage." He tried to keep the volume of his voice to a minimum; now he was trembling with rage, and he couldn't just unleash it on the officer, not if he wanted information. "I know that whatever was there is essential to understanding this case. Are you seriously telling me our one and only real lead is gone?"

"I believe so, Dojima-san." The sound of chewing, followed by swallowing, made Dojima's stomach rumble. "I can consult with...oh?"

"What is it?" The detective held his breath, eyes wide.

"Excuse me for a moment, Dojima-san. Yes? Yes?" There was a lull in the conversation. "I see...you're certain?" Another lull, this one longer, punctuated with occasional gasps. "If you're sure, this could be...what? Of course I'll inform Dojima-san. No, thank you, your assistance has been invaluable. Good day."

Dojima had been able to hear some of the speech going on, on the other side of the phone line, but it had been so muted that most of it was indecipherable gibberish, unintelligible to his ears. Now he was swamped by insatiable curiosity, in spite of the sinking feeling in his stomach; he supposed it was his detective's intuition, telling him whatever he was about to hear could not be good. Nanako stirred in her sleep beside him, and he took the opportunity to pat her in reassurance, bending down to plant a small kiss on her forehead. She stilled, smiling, leaving him to hope he could enjoy her good dreams as well.

"What is it? Any new developments?" he barked as quietly as he could into the receiver.

"Yes, Dojima-san." The other's tone was clipped, dark, and tense; Dojima guessed something major had become known, a game-changer in the case, and it was unusual for his instinct to be wrong. "Trace amounts of blood, enough for a full sample, have been found outside the scene you spoke of earlier, the one under investigation now. It is the only location on the scene we still have control of, so we will have difficulty corroborating with anything else, but...whoever our mysterious cleaner is, he hasn't done a perfect job."

That was it. From that day forth, Dojima would praise the gods with every bit of his body and soul.

"We intend to have samples taken for identification, as quickly as possible," the speaker continued, "so try to make yourself freely available, Dojima-san."

"Alright," he grunted, feeling some of his blood rush back to his head. He let out a heavy breath. It felt good to relax. "Call me if there are any further changes."

"Of course, sir," the man replied, "on the honour of the police department. Ishimori out."

"Wait!" The detective blanched. "The same punk kid from the blockade?"

"Yes, sir," the man, Ishimori, laughed. "I should apologise again for my conduct earlier. I allowed myself to be blinded by arrogance."

"...forget about it," Dojima muttered gruffly. At least he knew why the officer had been so curt earlier, fear and dislike pent up in his tone (maybe he'd write him up for it later, let off some steam with some good old-fashioned extreme disciplinary action). "Just...don't make a mistake like that again." He knew it was never good to hold grudges.

"I won't, sir!" From the bubbly, attentive inflection in his voice, Dojima could tell the boy was saluting on the other end. A real rookie, given power by some lazy superior, not really knowing what to do with it until it drove him mad. He could forgive that, right? "That's all, I believe!"

"Alright. Thanks for the warning." Just as Dojima was about to hang up, a cry of alarm rang out of the phone.

"A moment, sir, I've just received confirmation of a detail relating to the case!" The boy's enthusiasm made him sound almost pleased with himself. Dojima wondered why.

"What is it, Ishimori?"

"We have completed our sweep of the site, as you know, sadly," he paused to catch a breath. Dojima was almost amused at the speed of his speech. It was definitely irritating, he'd give him that. "The prefectural police have also finished conduct their search. We have now definitively concluded that the only missing passenger is Seta Souji." Dojima's heart literally wrenched in place; now it was over. Souji was gone. "That is all, sir."

The detective managed to force out a rude goodbye before he ended the call, which, he supposed, was an improvement over how he'd felt earlier. The sensation of pain, constricting his throat, stabbing at his heart, threatening to make his stomach explode, wasn't. Now that there was no doubt Souji was gone – not dead, never dead – for good, he'd have to start dealing with everything, much as it might hurt. Now, it was _real_. More real than it had been earlier, and he was practically the boy's guardian; it was his duty to confront it.

There were a lot of discrepancies with the case that he'd have to look into before he could find any true semblance of closure, but for now, he pushed it all to one side. All his regrets, his misgivings, his feelings, out of the way. The crickets outside had taken to chirping rhythmically now, as if they were singing, while the clouds above had cleared and the stars danced merrily in the sky; it was all he needed to know that he was in the real world now, not the dream the last year had been, with its actions, reactions, choices and consequences. That was enough alone to floor him, but as he had with Chisato, he would soldier through it. He was sure the only thing he could ever lose that he'd never recover from would be Nanako.

That old adage, the one that went 'That which doesn't kill us', was so funny, so appropriate, it almost gave him a heart attack. He couldn't help the little snigger that escaped him as he said it.

"Only makes us stronger, right? Come on, Nanako, let's go to your room. Time for bed."

She groaned sleepily as her father softly shook her awake, but she didn't complain, accepting his hand as he led her down the stairs and into her bedroom. In there, he tucked her into her bed, then kissed her goodnight, leaving her with her dreams, where he hoped she was still happy, with her complete little family.

Afterwards, he sank into his favourite seat on the couch in front of the tv, propping his bare feet up on the table. With a coffee held in one hand, stronger, darker, more bitter than ever, and the morning newspaper in the other – today's newspaper, thankfully free of anything related to the crash), Dojima attempted to gather his thoughts. The clock struck eleven, but it felt much later, with all the strain and exhaustion he could feel creeping through his body; he tried to ignore it all, the aching in his temples as he considered what he already knew, and what his informats in the prefectural police force would, with a little luck, hopefully have to share. He needed to clarify his ideas before he did anything else.

First of all, Souji was dead. There, he'd said it. Now he could at least start to come to terms with it. He'd have to get the word out, tell Souji's parents especially, seeing as they'd be home in a few days, expecting him there; that would be the hardest part, and worst of all, it had to be his number one priority.

Secondly, the case had to be dealt with. The mystery assailant, the crash, the disappearing body...what could very well be tantamount to murder.

Finally, he'd have to deal with everything else. Himself, Nanako, Souji's friends...they'd all just get in the way. For all the people around him who would undoubtedly suffer as soon as they found out; he'd have to lock up his own feelings, slog through them alone, the way he had before, even if Souji had thought it was wrong, to make sure that as few other people as possible had to deal with the guilt, the shame, the misery he felt.

The sudden knock on the door jolted Dojima out of his reverie. The shock of a late night caller was seldom enough; now, it seemed eerie, just too coincidental to be right.

_I wonder who it could be_, he mused as he opened the door, only to be utterly disarmed by the person on the other side.


	4. Chapter 3: Their Shared Suffering

_Hi again, guys! An extra long chapter for you today, because I'm just that darn nice. :D Thanks again for all your kind words, favourites, alerts, and hits, keep 'em coming! They make me happy. Don't feel obligated, though. ;P First of all, I think it'd be best if I mention I enjoyed writing this chapter. I hope you enjoy reading it!_

_Second, to answer your question, ZxZ, there will be pairings! I think I posted a warning in the first chapter about them. I haven't fully decided, but I know there'll be later slash, femslash and het (rare though they tend to be! XD). That's actually what I want to know - I'm not going to share the pairings, because they're secret so far, and I haven't fully decided yet, as I said, but there are lots of hints, implications and whatnot. So, two questions: first of all, which do you all prefer, Yukiko/Kanji/ Rise/Kanji, or Naoto/Kanji? Because I like the first the most and the latter the least, and I already have an idea for what I want to do about Naoto, but...I'd like to at least act like everyone's opinions will affect my work. :D_

_Also, I just realised there's an individual review-reply button in the email that comes with reviews, so from now on I'll be less of an idiot and use that. These sections will be shorter. :D_

_Finally, thank you all for reading! I'd just like to add that pairings are not the focus of this story, they take a backseat to the plot. So, if you're coming here hoping this'll pan out into some overarching romance fic, there'll be romance later, probably, but it's not as important as the terrible mystique or intrigue. :D_

**_FINALLY! - A lot of you are probably put off by the strong Souji-centric nature of this story. What I want you to know is that he is the main character of the game, the focus of social links, the driving force behind so much of the plot. I think it's entirely fair for him to be treated the way I treat him. :D_**

**_Also, with the social links, assume that this Souji took every possible social link to its conclusion, and that he did so by taking all the romantic social links to the point where you can date them and then rejecting them. So, during the game, he was single._**

**_At some point, I will be a good writer and clarify this in the plot. But for now, it's Word of God, folks, so...I apologise. XD _**

* * *

**Their Shared Suffering**

God, Yosuke was _annoying_. He never knew when to stop talking, especially when he went off on one of those tangential rants of his, the ones about this band, that game, or that other movie, that he could never quite stay away from, and always directed at _her_.

"Yosuke," Chie begged, in her most defeated tone, "please go away now. Please." She hoped that he would listen; she'd pleaded, bargained, manipulated, and raged as best she could for the past hour, trying to get him off the line, and away from her ears, but none of it had been successful, not even when she'd offered to buy him a new bike if he'd shut his mouth for just a moment so she could think. She'd never known anyone, not even Rise, to talk so much, for so long. Now, it had long gone past the point where she could say she'd gone mad.

"But Chie," the voice at the other end of the line whined, "you haven't even heard this next one yet, and it's so good!"

Pulling on the tips of her hairdo in frustration, Chie bit her tongue.

"Hear it once, I've heard 'em all," she whispered ominously. "Hear them all ten times, learn 'em! Yosuke, you haven been bugging me for, like, an hour and a half." She had so much more to say, but she decided to keep it short and sweet. "Are you ever going to just leave me alone?"

She ignored the huff of bitter disappointment from the boy – she'd gotten used to doing just that by now – and set her lips in a thin frown of defiance. Sure, he couldn't see it, but she was certain he'd feel it from wherever he was.

"I'm on duty, " he snipped back after she'd started angrily at the phone for a few seconds. "And stop looking at me like that. It's creepy."

Chie blinked.

"How did you-"

"So I was right!" crowed Yosuke triumphantly. Chie slapped her forehead, embarrassed. "I know you, Chie," he laughed, "so I can tell. You're being even bitchier than usual, is it that time of the month or-"

A few seconds after she slammed the receiver into the cradle, it started ringing again; three beeps, then a pause, then three beeps, then a pause, over and over again. The sound was almost painful on her poor ears, and eventually someone downstairs was bound to get annoyed by the caller who refused to give up (though she wasn't sure there was anyone downstairs...she'd heard the door slam earlier, so it seemed safe to assume she was alone in the house). She answered the phone, albeit as reluctantly as she humanly could.

"What?" she hissed into the phone. She was greeted by an amused sigh.

"That hurt my ears, you know. Anyway," but he didn't have time to finish: Chie had already thrown the receiver across the room, at the wall. It bounced off harmlessly, with an audible crack, then rolled across the floor until it came to rest at her feet. She hesitated to pick it up – what if that fatally annoying moron was still on the other side, biding his time for an opportunity to start talking again and melt her fragile, traumatised brain? She couldn't take that chance.

Slowly, ponderously, the brunette leaned down to grab the phone. She lifted it to her ear; no one was there. Good. Maybe she was free.

The silence was golden, relaxing in its wholesome, blanketing nature. Carefully, she pressed the 'disconnect' button on the phone, heaving a sigh of overjoyed relief when no evil laughter or pointless, idle chatter broke the quiet. All was good.

Of course, all that was only temporary, and Chie hit the floor when the sudden buzz of her phone in her pocket snapped her back into the real world. Clumsily playing at the keypad she noticed Yukiko's name spelled out in brightly shining letters on the screen; assuming it meant caller ID, she connected the call. A little bit of happiness revived itself in her stomach. A call from Yukiko was certainly unexpected, never unwelcome, and always nice. They'd need each other even more than before since Souji had left, anyway.

"Looks like I win!" cried the very unwelcome, unexpected, and definitely not-nice voice of Yosuke, that moron, from the speaker in her cell phone. Chie managed to subdue the urge to roar furiously, but only by the skin of her teeth (quite literally, at that).

"Why am I speaking to you?"

"I switched Yukiko's number with mine in your address book when you told me to fix that bug you had on your cell, for just such an occasion!" He sounded so proud, like he'd done something astonishingly clever; she couldn't fault his enthusiasm, she supposed.

"So what happened to Yukiko's number? What if I need to call her? If there's an emergency or something?"

"You're not her mom, Chie," he replied off-handedly, "and I'm sure you know her number off by heart by now!" She knew he was rolling his eyes on the other side, and she wanted to hit him for it. So what if she was, maybe, just a little bit clingy? Maybe she did know Yukiko's number, but it wasn't her fault she worried about her closest friend, liked to keep tabs on her, right? So he could keep his nose out of her business and his grubby little hands off her stuff, thank you very much! "Anyway, I put her number under my name, so, I dunno, just...switch 'em back, I guess?"

"And how do I do that, Yosuke?" she snarled.

"Figure it out yourself! It's simple, rename the contacts or something. Not very promising for a cop, Chie."

"Fine, whatever." A thought occurred to Chie then, a sickening one that filled her with dread. "You didn't take Yukiko's number, did you?"

"Nah," he laughed, and Chie breathed yet another sigh of relief. "I figure, if I'm gonna get Yukiko's number, it's gotta be the same way partner got it, straight from her. Pass the Amagi challenge, just like everyone else."

Despite her annoyance with Yosuke, and the way he talked about that stupid Amagi challenge joke, Chie couldn't help grinning.

"I always thought," she crooned sweetly, preparing herself for immediate retribution, "you were more of a Seta challenge guy, Yosuke."

"What?" the boy yelped. She could practically see him jumping back into a defensive position, so she chose to take the offensive, maybe drive Yosuke away instead of ignoring him herself.

"But then, even with that whole 'partner' handicap," the mockery oozing through her syrup-sweet tone, "sometimes we all wonder if you could do it. I mean, better to try a hill before you scale Mount Everest, right?"

Holding back the tides of laughter that threatened to burst from her throat at any time was a challenge indeed, but she pressed the advantage, knowing she had Yosuke by the balls (though not literally, never literally, that would be sick).

"Maybe you should start small, work on one of Kanji's Souji dolls before you move on to the real th-th-thing!" Her cackles were getting to be too much. She had to stop, before Yosuke exploded-

"What are you talking about? Don't turn this on me! I didn't, I never, what are you..." She could do this. She could hold it in. Yosuke sounding like someone had filled him with helium, squeaky, humiliated, and shocked, wasn't enough to get her. "I just, I never, there was no, I mean, we only hugged that one time!"

Nope. Not happening. The last little noise Yosuke made, a mixture of 'argh' and 'hngh' at a higher pitch than even _Rise _could reach was the straw that broke the metaphorical camel's back, and this time, Chie simply wasn't strong enough to spare his feelings any more. First came a snort, then a snigger, then she positively erupted into a torrent of laughter that eventually devolved into fits of giggles, hoots, and guffaws.

"Stop laughing at me, you, you, I don't even know what you are but it's awful!"

Now the tears streaming down her face, multiplying with every bout of childish glee, were turning into a nuisance, so she reined herself in, exercising a little self-control. She hoped she could do it.

"Sorry, sorry," she mumbled sheepishly, "I forgot we weren't allowed to mention your little crush."

"Chie, you're on speaker-phone and I'm in the middle of Junes here, you evil-"

There they were again, stoicism giving way to uncontrollable titters that shook her body from head to toe. If she didn't stop she'd be as bad as Yukiko.

"Anyway," she started, wiping the tears out of her eyes, "Yukiko's a pure, innocent, traditional, _demure_ girl. You've got more of a chance tricking her into liking you than you ever did Souji, and you've got no chance with her!"

She caught Yosuke's sniff, making her wonder if she'd pushed it too far. Then she realised she was talking to Yosuke, who didn't even understand the meaning of 'limits'. He deserved everything he got!

"I was never even," he stopped, sucking in a breath, "interested in partner like that anyway. I'm not...not...not like that. He's just my best friend."

"Sure," she shot back, "and Kashiwagi's Inaba's beauty queen. I'm not that stupid, Yosuke."

"I don't want to talk about this. I never wanted to talk about this!" Chie imagined the boy's arms flailing above his head in disbelief. It was one of the nicer images she'd had of him recently. She was willing to drop the subject if he was (it wasn't the best territory for her, either). "I still haven't told you that joke, have I? It goes sorta like this-"

"Yadda, yadda, yadda," Chie groaned, waving a hand in the air as if to dismiss the question as she flopped into a nearby beanbag, "the woman, probably a blonde, gets it. C'mon, Yosuke, do you really have to keep boring me with these stupid dirty jokes?"

"I guess not," he said, and there was much rejoicing.

"So why have you been harassing me for so long, huh?" Chie was genuinely curious, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. The same reason Yukiko, Kanji and Naoto had plunged into their work, Rise had gone off...somewhere, and she was at home, wasting time. Boredom, sadness, and a noticeable lack of anywhere to really _be_. Who knew where Teddie had disappeared to, because she couldn't feel him in the TV world.

"Ever since you guys took Nanako home, I've been bored stiff," Yosuke moaned. Chie understood; she'd given working at Junes a try, and it had been one of the most harrowing, tiring experiences in her life – ranking just below fighting Izanami and just above eating a full Super Rainy Day Meat Bowl on her list of Things Never To Do Again. "Usually I'd get partner to come by and help me out, or I'd be on the phone to him, but...you know."

"Miss the free labour?" she teased, throwing one of the cushions from her bed aside as she leapt into it. She wanted to pull the quilt over her head, but she'd left the light on, and it'd just get on her nerves with all the natural lighting.

"Hey, we always tried to pay him!"

"I know, I know," she said, chuckling softly. "He's just not the type to accept anything. What can you do? He's Souji, pig-headed stubbornness and all."

"Voice sold separately," Yosuke quipped in an advertiser's deep, throaty voice, making Chie smile, "though sometimes I feel like I can't get a word in with him. Now that's weird, right?"

"Not really." Chie felt the same way sometimes. "When he starts talking, sometimes he just won't stop, right?"

"Yeah," Yosuke said glumly.

"This is depressing."

"What's depressing," her personal bug moaned, "is that I'm still working when I should be at home, talking to my partner. I feel like such a needy housewife, you know?"

"No, I don't," she said, leaning back to rest her head on the wall behind her as she crossed her legs. "But I always thought you liked it."

"Alright, Chie, I'll go," came the reply, conciliatory but mirthful. She cheered. "But I swear, you have to work the next shift with me or I'll die, and haunt you from the grave!"

She couldn't stop the howl of laughter that ripped itself loose, but she did vow to never, ever, ever let Yosuke call her again.

"No way! Get Teddie to do it!"

"He's gone somewhere, probably back into the TV. Plus, he's always flirting with the customers!"

"Really?" Chie was surprised; either Teddie had gotten very good at hiding very quickly, or she wasn't as capable a scanner as Rise had made her out to be. She chose to pass it off as the latter, as that seemed far more plausible. "Last time I checked, the only things in there were Shadows."

"Somebody needs to check your head for damage, Chie," Yosuke sighed, "must have taken one too many punches!"

"Hey!" she cried back, not sure whether to be insulted or ashamed when his meaning finally clicked in her head. _Duh_. Of course there were only Shadows in there! Teddie was a Shadow at heart, right? What else could possibly explain how she'd missed him?

"Don't feel too stupid, Chie," was the last thing she heard from Yosuke. She knew he was right, but she'd have to get around it eventually (could a cop get by, being so dense?).

Her eyes flitted around the room, first to the clock on the opposite wall, still ticking rhythmically, then to the TV suspended in the air on a shelf at her bedside. She _could _call Yukiko, make sure she was feeling alright – she had been struck pretty hard by Souji's departure, after all – or she could wait for Yukiko's inevitable call and not come across as overly clingy and possessive. Or, at least, not any more so.

When two minutes, then five minutes, then ten minutes passed after the usual time her phone would ring to tell her that Yukiko was in need, for whatever reason, she began to grow impatient, and a little anxious. They'd agreed to a routine for a reason. They both liked order, predictability, stability (even if they both wanted some degree of danger and excitement in their lives), things peaceful country life had drilled into them until they were too normal to want much of anything different, and it worried her that somehow, for some reason, the norm was no longer the norm.

In the end, after a minute's deliberation, she didn't call. There must have been a reason Yukiko hadn't rung her yet, probably an important one to do with the inn, and it'd be a bad idea to forcibly involve herself in it, and by extension, Yukiko's private business. Instead she contented herself with the TV, fiddling with the remote as she surfed channels.

The first was met with a resounding vote of no. Some age-old show, probably a Kanji thing, airing reruns on a channel she didn't even know her family had. People dressed up in elaborately designed, garishly decorated samurai costumes performing choreography routines that were decidedly despicable, almost horrific to watch, made her want to hurl.

The next lot were pretty much all the same thing, boring stocks-and-shares business reports for the aspiring merchants in the region. None of them were in Inaba, she assumed, so why there were so many of these channels eluded her...but if they were running, someone had to be watching them, enjoying all the complicated numbers, graphs, and economical treatises. Just not her.

Sports! That was something she could get behind. Watching boxers, martial artists, and wrestlers duke it out live was always fun, a good way to get her blood pumping. Except all that was on now seemed to be a 'best of' video about the local baseball team, whom she knew for a fact had never actually hit any highs (or even been in range of one, having never even made the lower leagues), so why they had a 'best of' video was beyond her too.

She skipped a few more channels after that. She'd seen _Dragonball_, after all, and _Nadesico_, and probably a lot of other animated stuff too. Period dramas were a no-no; they all had the same plot anyway. Foreign movies and sitcoms would have been pretty good, if they weren't so badly dubbed before being aired. Personally, she preferred the original English or Cantonese releases, subbed, and that was fine, despite Rise's complaints, or Naoto's smug translation corrections. The local network never seemed to do that, though. She didn't quite get how people couldn't watch the shows in their original languages, where they were best; Souji, shockingly, had expressed a defiant opinion on that, 'not quite understanding' how someone could prefer something in a language they had no understanding of, to something in a language they did. But hey, she'd responded, their prerogative, right? Maybe they were just smarter than him. Or spoke English, or whatever, better. That had earned a laugh from her grey-haired friend, so she'd taken it as a win.

When the news flashed on the TV, Chie's first inclination was to ignore it and move on. It didn't matter, right? Anything she needed to know, she'd be told later. She'd had enough of watching the news obsessively, anyway, and that awful commentator had driven her to despair ten times over so far. The problem was those thoughts, appropriate though they were, ended up being drowned out by the abrupt screeching of a loud voice in her mind, that kept repeating '_How can you impress Dojima-san into training you if you don't do anything to impress him_' like some sort of wicked mantra. If she'd taken the time to understand Latin at all, the way the school had suggested, she was sure it'd have been a chorus of eerie monks, chanting obscene insults at her in her own head. That wouldn't be cool.

The voice resonating in her head seemed to come from somewhere near the back, where Chie found Suzuka Gongen clamouring for her attention. She gave it, though slightly unwillingly, focusing on the Persona as she tried – futilely – to shut out her other thoughts.

_What is it? _She thought at her Persona. Geez, it'd been more than a year, why wasn't she more used to this by now?

The part of her that was less Chie and more Suzuka yammered on mindlessly, unaware of Chie's distraction. When she finally recollected her thoughts, her Persona had spun some wild diatribe about the news, how she needed to shape up and be self-sufficient if she wanted to protect anybody, a constant uphill battle against the weakness of the self. To be fair, Suzuka didn't need to be so blunt and _mean_ about it. Chie totally got how important all these concepts were; unfortunately, by the time her Persona was finished ranting she felt like someone had torn her body open before telling her she was a complete monster for having body fat. She couldn't help the way she'd been made! So what if other people had it harder than her? It just wasn't fair, that was what was up, you unrelentingly stupid Persona!

After a little more chastisement, Chie dismissed Suzuka Gongen. She'd gotten bored of being told off anyway; everyone else did that often enough. Her hand said otherwise, though, and she found it using the remote, entirely without her brain's permission, to put the news back on right in the middle of the ultra-cool fight scene she'd managed to find (on _Takeshi's Castle_, yeah, but come on, she was entitled to at least that, right?).

"Stupid Shadows," she muttered, "with their stupid demands about stupid self-betterment or whatever."

Right now, what passed for news out in the boonies – she'd learned that turn of phrase from Adachi, regrettably – was a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, accompanied by an overtly upbeat tune and a droning voice-over 'extolling the virtues', as Naoto had once so eloquently put it, cat ownership. Naoto probably liked cats, Chie mused, and she probably watched her TV in English too.

Chie yawned. She was more of a dog person anyway.

As if by magic, summoned to her side, her dog bounded through the flap in her door, jumped up onto her bed, and proceeded straight past the pleasantries to madly licking her face. Despite the wetness, and the dog's disgusting breath, her mood brightened considerably.

"Hello, boy!" she said, in the sort of voice people tend to use when speaking to dogs (nasal, high pitched, overly infantile), pulling it into an embrace as she rolled onto her side. It barked, then carried on licking her. "Who's a good boy? You are! I missed you, yes I did!"

They carried on playing for a while. Chie never missed an opportunity to pay some attention to her favourite boy in the world, after all. He was getting old, and he'd never let her down; she'd vowed never to hurt him either, when she was younger, and she meant to keep her promise. Eventually, they settled down, Chie lying back as she stared at the screen, still displaying a cat, proudly bouncing around a ball of yarn, now with the image of another cat superimposed over the top-right corner. The dog was quiet, lying down next to her, snout by her face; one of her hands began petting it idly, as the other scratched behind one of its ears. It whined softly, so she switched to the other ear, as it moved closer to her, laying its head in the crook of her neck.

When the bulletin _finally_ finished, leading into a string of advertisements for cats and cat food, Chie yawned again, eliciting a yawn from the dog. That made her laugh, and as ads for more useless things flashed by her face, she entertained herself with her pet's company.

The sudden sound of the news program's musical theme caught her attention moments afterwards.

"And now," the anchor said, shuffling some papers around in his hands, "back to today's top news story."

"I wonder what that could be?" she whispered into the dog's ear. It panted ever-so-slightly, pushing a little further into her hold. The cold touch of its nose on her cheek made her gasp a little. Weren't dogs supposed to be clairvoyant, or something? What could make her dog seem so...scared?

"Earlier today," said the presenter, as if in response, "an accident occurred that destroyed a train on the Okina city line."

"Oh no," she mumbled reflexively, hand rising to cover her mouth as her stomach jumped into her throat. It couldn't be. Her thoughts went out to the poor people, suffering, before realising that Souji had been on a train on that line earlier. But...no. There was no way something could have happened, not now. She prayed, harder than she had ever prayed before; it didn't help the sinking feeling, one synchronised to her pounding heartbeat that screamed 'heartbreak'.

"It was believed that there had been no casualties." Relief pumped through Chie as he spoke, mixed with a climbing sense of fear. "Now, however, the police are investigating the whereabouts of one Souji Seta, currently presumed dead."

She was at the door in seconds, faster than she'd ever moved, dog yelping in the room behind her as she fled from the TV. Tears gathered in her eyes, breaking through the dams she'd so strongly believed she'd built, flooding her face faster than she could wipe them off.

It wasn't _possible_. It had to be a prank. Someone was playing a mean, cruel trick on her. The stabbing feeling in her stomach that grew with every passing second, every memory her mind forcefully dredged up, refused to relent, telling her that she couldn't stop until she _knew_.

He'd defeated a god! Could no one see it? Did Dojima know? Did _Nanako _know?Hadn't he said something, realised Souji couldn't possibly be dead? Nothing could beat Souji! Nothing. There was nothing in any world, anywhere, that could stop their leader. Even their entire group had been unable to stop him when he'd set his mind on giving Namatame mercy. And she'd _loved_ him, for crying out loud! How could he leave her, leave all of them, behind? How could he submit to mortality, shuffle off his mortal coil, without stopping to spare a farewell for them? Giving up on all of them, just leaving...that couldn't be Souji. It wasn't him. It _wasn't_ him. It'd never be him. No way it could be him. Never. Never.

She tripped, towards the bottom of the stairs, falling into a heap on the last step, but it didn't matter, didn't faze her. No physical pain could stop her. Izanami had almost killed them all, put them through unimaginable levels of pain, but they'd come back and won, with Souji's leadership to guide them. How could hurting herself compare? How could it compare with what Souji must surely have felt? Did he have her incredible strength, cultivated through innumerable hours of training behind and in front of the TV screen?

Why hadn't she trained her heart?

Her parents were out. Good. She couldn't handle them seeing her at her lowest, watching as she struggled to cope with even the simplest things. Breathing was a challenge. Thinking was more so. She felt sick, sick and wrong, like she was somewhere she wasn't meant to be...

Funny how Yukiko came to be in her mind. Did she know? Was this why she hadn't called? Chie had been watching the late repeat news channel, after all, and it was still blaring above her, unintelligible but so _obviously _talking about sweet, perfect Souji, the model human being. They hadn't known how weak and indecisive he could be, how ruthlessly cruel he was when he got worked up, rare as those occasions were...they only saw the good, the admirable, the virtue. Not the bastard that hid behind an angel's smile. They saw a sculpture, designed for deception, not a human being...made up of all the little things, the imperfections that made her want to die, rather than just mourn forever.

She'd _loved _him! How could he leave her behind? She'd promised to protect him! She'd failed. She'd _failed_! How could she go on, knowing that? Knowing she'd failed to keep her promise?

Running to the bathroom as fast as her unstable, wobbly legs would carry her, Chie felt the interminable sadness swallow her the moment before she started throwing up. Suzuka Gongen was fighting for release, desperate to kill something, anything, false bravado and bluster hiding a shattered heart.

Absent-mindedly she wondered if the others were feeling the same.

* * *

Once over, once under. Once over, once under. Across, above, below, across, above, below, above, below-

_Shit_. He couldn't concentrate, that much was obvious. His hands trembled ever so slightly with each careless stitch, the patterns coming out looking less like the finely-printed masterpieces they were supposed to be and more like shoddy apprentice-craft. None of it was anywhere near the usual standard he prided himself so much on, wastes of time and materials that he couldn't afford, and that pissed him off. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't let himself be pushed around by things as petty as emotions, because that wasn't what a real man did, but...apparently he couldn't keep that promise.

Kanji'd only been able to get on the path to becoming a real man, truth be told, because Souji, his Senpai, had always been there to push him forward. Senpai was a true man, he knew that much; someone to love, to emulate, like an elder brother. Not because he was smart, or understanding, or cool, or charismatic, but because he'd never let himself get pushed around by anything, not even the police, and he'd always been calm, collected, relaxed (aside from when he wasn't, when they'd broken him, and he'd flipped out like a maniac and very nearly attacked them all). He stood up for himself, in ways he never did, and now, when his memories were the ones bullying him into submission, he wished he could borrow just a piece of the strength his Senpai had always had. Without Senpai, it felt a lot harder to be manly, to take care of himself, but he had faith that he'd get over it eventually...he just couldn't see when 'eventually' would _be_.

He put down his sewing tools, needle, thread, materials, stencils, templates, all the things he prized for his work, and pronounced that experiment dead. It'd been impulsive, the desire of an escapist, and ultimately pointless, so he didn't feel too turn up about it; he'd have liked not to waste anything on such a useless venture, though.

The light outside his window had begun to fade quite a while ago, so he'd switched on his light and pulled the curtains shut, taking a moment to savour the way the streetlights bathed the town outside in golden light, driving away the purplish darkness. It was a picture he saw all the time, but ever since he'd fallen in with the others, small things like the view outside his window had become so much more sacred to him.

One of the chairs in his room had been upturned earlier, when he'd been trying to make room for some work, so he righted it before sitting down. Not reminiscing was hard, but he knew it was for the best. It would just make things worse; his problem was that he couldn't help the way his thoughts kept scanning over the past year, what he was sure had been inarguably the best year of all their lives so far, in spite of everything that'd happened in it.

He pondered going out, up to the liquor store, just to catch Naoki on his way home. They'd become good friends recently, more so than they had been before, and getting together to go eat at Aiya or, worst case scenario, Souzai Daigaku, had become a highlight of his everyday life. Now, it'd certainly help to take both their minds off everything else, if only for a couple of hours. Plus, he was hungry for some good food.

Scrambling around the room for a few minutes in search of his phone was no easy task, and it just served to work up his appetite. He'd bought the thing when he'd finally gotten tired of Rise's complaining that he was never easy to contact (he liked her well enough, but he preferred his personal space intact, thank you, and she was too damn needy for his tastes) and started using it religiously almost immediately afterwards. Funny how such a useful thing hadn't been in his life for so long; funnier that it was so damn easy to lose. He'd foolishly given Souji that number, months ago, rather than the house number when they'd swapped details and now, when Senpai had promised to call, and he wanted to call Naoki, he couldn't find it. Great.

A ring, followed by a beat, then another ring, then another beat, alerted him to the fact that someone had texted him. The noise was coming from his uniform, and he suppressed a curse; of course it'd be in the most obvious place! Of course the most obvious place would be the last place he'd look!

He dug his hand into the breast pocket of his jacket. Weirdly enough, he couldn't recall ever actually putting the phone in there, or even wearing it, but he shrugged off the confusion and flipped it open. Out fell a note, scrawled on a piece of paper in chicken-scratch handwriting; after a few struggles with interpreting whatever the jumbles of letters and numbers meant, Kanji finally pieced together what the message most likely was. In what barely resembled any language he knew, Teddie had written 'you dropped this'; he brushed it aside, making a note to thank the bear later.

Keying his unlock code into the phone, he stood up, pacing around the room in anticipation. Nervousness had never been his strong suit, but a message from Senpai had been forming in his head all day and he wanted to know how accurate his mind's picture was.

He was more than a bit surprised at his three unread messages, all from much earlier in the day. Glancing up at the clock, the bleach blond caught a glimpse of the time. Ten past seven in the evening. Later than he'd thought, certainly, but not unmanageably so, though catching Naoki on his way home was a definite no-no.

The first message was from Rise, who'd apparently gone to harass Naoto-san. He still didn't feel fully comfortable calling her anything else unless it was in the heat of passion – and he'd absolutely never be in the kind of passion with Naoto-san that his mind conjured images of whenever those ideas popped into it. Naoto had been extraordinarily despondent earlier (in her own words, not his) and Rise had decided to stay with her and cheer her up. Kanji couldn't help but feel relieved. If there was one thing the admittedly stunning redhead never failed to do, it'd be making her feel better, and Naoto_ had _been pretty down earlier. She hadn't even remembered to pull her cap down over her face when she'd blushed at one of Yosuke-senpai's dirty jokes.

Pressing a few buttons to send a reply, along the lines of 'good to know, now leave me alone', Kanji moved on to checking the next message. This one was from Yukiko, a simple one asking if he'd like to move their next lesson to the next day rather than in the next week. He'd been teaching her arts and crafts, she'd been lecturing him on things relevant to running an inn, and he understood that she felt lonely better than most anyone (except Senpai, Chie-senpai, and Yukiko-senpai's family, but he accepted that, any opportunity to get closer to Yukiko-senpai, he'd never turn down). He was eager to learn a little more in the way of management skills, though they'd probably never be of any use to him.

He blushed, reading it, because he'd always had something of a soft-spot for her, since they'd been kids, and the fact that she'd asked for his number, not the other way around, filled him with a shy elation. She'd never given it to Yosuke-senpai, or Teddie, so he'd been too afraid to ask – but she'd been as perceptive as ever, and taken the initiative. He admired her for that, respected her too; he wished he could have some of her strength for himself.

Disappointingly, the last wasn't from Senpai. It was a string of random letters, numbers, and symbols; total gibberish, probably spam. Still, he had a feeling he vaguely knew the sender by their number, so he saved it, writing a note down in his phone to show it to Naoto-san later. If it was code, she'd kill him if he didn't.

When his inbox was cleared, after some sorting and archiving (tedious, irritating, and almost incomprehensibly addictive), he set about writing a quick text to Naoki, asking if he was up for grabbing a quick bite to eat down at Aiya. Nothing fancy, just a beef bowl – he wasn't really in the mood for anything heavy, and he was pretty positive Naoki would feel the same way.

He hit send. The reply was almost instantaneous, a 'failed to deliver' message that made him want to chuck the stupid thing away. The second had pretty much the same result, so, deciding to see if he could get better reception, he threw the curtains apart, jimmied open the window in his room that always stuck like it'd been glued shut, and leaned out, phone in hand. Third time was the charm. Within seconds, his phone had rung, and he was engaged in conversation with his younger, more timid friend.

"So," Naoki said, after they exchanged pleasantries, "what is it? It's pretty late, you know."

"Yeah," Kanji muttered back, "sorry about that. Just really out of it today."

"I know how you feel," the other boy laughed. Kanji smiled unconsciously. "Dad wanted me to close the store an hour ago, but I've been so busy I can't concentrate."

"So you're still there?" A noise of assent confirmed Kanji's question. "Cool. I didn't think you'd be. Wanna get a bite to eat?"

"Aiya or Souzai?" Naoki's chuckles were tinged with the faint tone of bitter nostalgia. "Too many memories, both of them."

"I know what you mean," the punk said owlishly, peering into the darkness where he swore he could hear a cat shuffling around, mewling quietly. The whole thing worried him; Senpai loved cats, so much that it scared Kanji, and had gone out of his way to teach him the same love. "Better food at Aiya, though. And it's not made of mystery meat."

"I don't know about that," Naoki laughed again, "but you're right, and it's cheaper. Should I meet you there?"

"Nah," he dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand, "I'll come up and get you. Can't let little baby Naoki walk around in the dark on his own, can I?"

"Shut up," Naoki said, betrayed by the humour in his voice. "Anyway, I'll see you in a sec."

"Alright," Kanji finished, ending the call. Wrapping himself in his thickets jacket (the cool of the night-time spring air had chilled him to the bone), he shut the window again, slipping the phone into a trouser pocket.

Through the door, down the stairs, patiently but quickly, as fast as his feet would carry him safely, he shouted a goodbye to his mother and headed out the door, closing it gently behind him. This time the air didn't sting him quite so roughly, warm coat protecting him, so he started in the direction of the liquor store. It wasn't a long walk, and within a minute he'd knocked on the door, leaning on the vending machine outside and crossing his arms. The occasional passerby looked a little intimidated, hopefully by his intense stare, but thankfully kept right on going, without comment.

When the door opened, it was followed by Naoki, wearing an even thicker coat than he was. The shorter boy's hair was brushed back by a sudden blast of wind as he stepped into the evening air, closing the door behind him. Then he turned around, locking it firmly, before dropping his hands to his sides, looking up at the building in front of him, darkened and imposing, faintly outlined in the light of the moon and the nearby streetlamps.

"Hey," Kanji began uncertainly, still slightly uncomfortable around his friend. It wasn't so long ago that he'd lost his sister, truth be told, so Kanji felt insecure, bumbling clumsily around anything that so much as resembled a danger topic (though he couldn't deny that the younger boy appeared to be in relatively good spirits).

"Hi," Naoki replied, falling into step beside the bleach blond as they headed towards Aiya. Silence fell over them both, neither willing to disturb the peace of the night; it was a companionable one, surprisingly enough, and not particularly awkward at all.

When they arrived at Aiya, each pushing open one of the double doors, they were greeted by the powerful, delectable smell of Chinese food and the roar of speech from all directions ahead, underlined by the overwhelming hum of action and_ life_. They went inside, allowing the doors to fall back into place behind them as they seated themselves in the middle of a row of tables by the wall, the same table they'd sat at when the Team had been racking its collective brains, trying to find the real killer.

"Evening, Kan-chan, Nao-chan!" the chef hollered at them, words laced with amusement and happiness. Kanji glared at him in response, Naoki smiled and waved; they looked at each other before groaning in unison. "What can I get you boys? The usual, right?"

"I thought I told you to stop calling me that," the older boy snarled. Both Naoki and the chef cackled; Kanji could feel the pressure points in his head throbbing with annoyance, shame, and a distinctly unwanted measure of enjoyment. How he could be enjoying being tortured, he didn't know. "Anyway, I'm not that hungry."

"Then I'll get you half your usual," the proprietor said in return, still laughing with glee. "What about you, Nao-chan?"

"I'll just have a special," Naoki answered casually, taking a sip from one of the glasses of water the chef laid out in front of them. Kanji glared at him, partly for being so unflappable, partly for undermining his protests.

"C'mon, old man," Kanji growled, "can't you get us something better to drink?"

"Knowing you, Kan-chan," the chef snickered, "better means alcoholic, and I am not putting your life, my life, or my restaurant in jeopardy. Not when your mother is right across the road!"

Kanji huffed, swearing under his breath. Sadly, the chef was right. Naoki looked amused.

"I'll go get your food ready," the man said in a tone that broached no further argument. Kanji rested his head on the table, next to his glass of _water_, refusing to meet Naoki's mirthful eyes out of shame. The next few minutes were comprised of small talk; 'how are you', 'what's going on in your life', 'very nice weather we're having', though they both already knew the answers. It was the sort of conversation Kanji was used to ignoring. Pointless talk had never been his style before; it was only recently, within the last year, that he'd started doing it at all...he couldn't say he didn't enjoy it, though, which was a major source of discomfort. He'd never seen himself as the gossiping type.

As their food arrived, they each dug in, silent once more but appreciative of the fine company. Kanji was especially annoyed – the chef had winked slyly, conspiratorially, at him as he'd handed over the food, a full meal he was sure he couldn't finish, not even with Naoki pinching bits of it occasionally. The guy had even said he'd only charge for half! It didn't feel right, taking free food, but damn, he'd been on the ball. Kanji was ravenous, and now he could barely stop himself from stuffing his face. He really would have to renovate the place in the future.

"So," Naoki said, once he'd cleaned up his plates and bowls. Kanji was still only on his first dish, mouth full, chewing, and clamped tightly shut. It fell open and hung there, half-chewed mouthful swallowed as his tongue lolled out. Naoki mock-retched.

"Shu'p," Kanji mumbled, taking another large bite and chewing hastily. "So what?"

The specks of rice dotted on Kanji's face, combined with the way his voice was obscured by the food in his mouth, made Naoki burst into laughter, hands holding tightly onto his stomach.

"Oh, man," he grinned when the laughter died down, wiping the beginnings of tears away from his eyes. He lobbed a balled-up tissue at Kanji, whose face accepted it as gratefully as it could, smacking his forehead and falling into his hands. Bemusement still radiated from his blank expression. "Clean yourself up, man, you eat like a pig!"

"Thanks," Kanji retorted sourly, dabbing gracelessly at his cheeks with the tissue. "Anyway, damn, I was hungry!" He patted his stomach, grinning. "What's up, man?"

"I was just thinking," Naoki said, taking a gulp from his drink, "we should go visit Okina next weekend. I want to buy some things some people recommended to me."

"Who?" Kanji's voice was full of curiosity.

"Oh, Yosuke-senpai, Rise-chan. Your friends."

"You talk to those guys?" Kanji was shocked, perhaps a little perplexed. Did they have any connections, apart from him? Then he remembered Souji, understanding crystallising in his head.

"Don't sound so surprised," Naoki laughed, "I know Rise-chan's an idol, but they're human too, right? And Yosuke-senpai is pretty cool."

"It's you I'm concerned about, man," Kanji replied dryly, "I didn't even think she was your type, and don't even get me started on Yosuke-senpai. Man, I don't even know anymore."

"Don't worry, she's not." Naoki's grin virtually sparkled. It reminded Kanji of Teddie. "She's not interested in me, either, so don't get jealous!"

"What?" Kanji stammered, eyes darting fearfully around the restaurant. No one seemed to have heard. That was good. "I am not crushing on Rise! Why would you even think that?"

"It's just so obvious," Naoki answered. Kanji did his best not to blush, but he could already feel the heat of embarrassment spreading through his cheeks.

"I don't like her like that," he groaned.

"I know," Naoki laughed. "I was just kidding. The way you reacted, though! Priceless."

"Yeah, yeah," Kanji growled through gritted teeth. "Get on with it. What'd Rise tell you to buy?"

"Just some music. You know, stuff she likes. It's what friends do. Friends who aren't you, anyway." It was hard for Kanji not to snap at that. Just because he wasn't big on music didn't mean he was some sort of primitive Luddite...though the only reason he knew what a Luddite was had been because Senpai had said it to him so often.

"I guess you mean her music? She wants you to give her sales a boost, right?"

"No," Naoki said, face twisting into a contemplative frown, "she seemed really against me buying anything she'd done. She directed me to the same sort of stuff Yosuke-senpai did."

"Yosuke-senpai? Really?" Now Kanji's expression changed to reflect Naoki's. "I didn't think they had the same tastes, like, at all."

"They're both rock fans, guitars and drums and things like that. Yosuke loves pop music too, idols, you know, but he's more into the fast stuff. It's all a bit crazy for me, but I'll give it a shot, see if there's anything there I like."

"Rock, huh?" The elder boy winced. "Senpai used to go on at me about rock. Said he thought Yosuke had terrible interests in music."

"Really?" Now Naoki looked amused again, eyes full of curiosity. "What sort of music did Souji-senpai listen to?"

The question hit Kanji for critical damage, catching him completely unawares.

"Oh? Umm..." he murmured as he scratched his head, searching for memories until he found the one he was seeking. "Senpai liked everything, I guess. He was really weird like that. He took me aside once, let me listen to some of the songs he had."

"And?" quizzed Naoki, leaning in with an intent gaze.

"There was a lot." Kanji sighed, troubled, trying to recall a distant memory. "He had, what, fifty thousand songs? From all over the place. Video games, pop music, TV shows, the works. Even some opera."

"Wow," Naoki said, looking almost shocked. It was a nice turnabout. "I didn't know Souji-senpai was so cultured. He played video games?"

"Yeah." he glanced down at the table, unwilling to meet Naoki's eyes for a moment, smothering a giggle. "He didn't have much free time, but somehow he was this...expert. Used to school Yosuke and me all the time. He said he even took on some guy, Daigo, once, at Street Fighter or something. Almost won, too."

"Amazing!" Naoki looked very impressed. "What sort of games did he play? Besides that one, of course."

"Everything." Kanji leaned back, satisfied and almost proud of his Senpai. He could just about remember the lectures he'd given them all in Mitsuo's dungeon, about design, mechanics, even music. "He said his favourites were role-playing games, strategy games, that sort of thing."

"Let me guess," Naoki quipped, chuckling. "He liked rules."

"Yeah, you're damn right about that," Kanji shrugged, "he always used to talk about the way sets of rules controlled all of the game. He was obsessed with subverting them, seeing how controlling the rules gave him control of the game instead."

"I remember him saying that to me, once." Naoki's words were fond, full of nostalgia. "'It's a wonderful world; you control the mechanics, it's yours.'"

"Yeah, right after 'calm down' it was his catchphrase." He felt like laughing hard at that. He could probably name at least twenty different times when his Senpai had told them to calm down off the top of his head.

For a moment, they sat there in silence. Kanji didn't want to be the one to break the peaceful, homely atmosphere; clearly Naoki didn't either, the layer of dusty reminiscence that had settled over them warm, comforting, and most of all, familiar. Like a friend who'd left, only to return.

"Electronica, classical, heavy metal. New age shit." Peals of laughter erupted from the elder boy. Naoki joined him. "Jazz, orchestrated, rock. Soul, reggae, hip-hop. Man, if it had a name, Senpai'd heard it. Weirdo."

"Yeah," Naoki breathed lightly, covering the rim of his now-emptied glass in a thin mist. The chef hurried over to refill it.

They sat there for a little longer, comfortable, relaxed, happy. It was a nice feeling, even in the aftermath.

"Kanji!" came a shout from the door a little while later, wrecking the veil of memory that'd enveloped the two boys. It was followed by a blast of freezing cold wind. The boy in question jumped to his feet, locking eyes with...his mother, who stood in the doorway, all eyes on her, but hers only for her son.

"Ma," he said as kindly as he could. "What's up? You alright?" Her face was unnaturally pale, white as a ghost; the rest of her skin was equally colourless, whether from the cold or some sort of shock, he didn't know. Her eyes were wide, terrified, as her body shuddered in the cold. She looked like she was about to faint; from exhaustion, or blood loss, or perhaps something worse.

"Kanji," she moaned, before collapsing. Kanji sprinted forward, managing to catch her in his arms as she swooned; the chef dropped his jug as he rushed to her side. The jug itself split and burst on contact with the floor, covering both Naoki and the room in water; he wasn't fussed, pausing only to smooth his disheveled, sodden clothes out as he bent over to clean up the mess, tissues in hand. The chef shook his head, however, motioning for him to attend to the Tatsumis as he went to get his own mop.

Kanji was fanning his mother's face, looking as if he was about to break down. Naoki closed the doors and knelt at their sides.

"Is everything alright, Kanji?" Kanji shook his head. "How do you feel, Tatsumi-san?" She groaned; not a pleasant sign.

"What should I do, Ma?" Kanji was stricken with grief, voice cracking; Naoki's heart wept for his friend, but he kept himself cool and controlled.

"Should I call the hospital, Tatsumi-san?" Kanji threw Naoki a grateful look, to which he responded with a reassuring nod.

"No!" Her free hand, the one Kanji wasn't rubbing deep circles into as he cradled her in his arms, reached out to lock itself around his wrist as he keyed the number for the emergency services into his own phone. "I'm fine, I just need-"

A hacking cough, preceded by a violent sneeze, told Naoki that she wasn't fine, that everything was not alright, but he knew better than to go against an older woman's wishes.

"What do you need, Ma?" Kanji still seemed ready to break at a moment's noticed. Every breath he drew was forced, weak and shaky, dangerously difficult to summon, but he couldn't let his mother down. He couldn't be alone.

"Take me home," she said, wracked with more coughs. Another strangled sob escaped her son's lips. "The TV, you need to see..."

She passed out shortly after that, not really able to find the strength to say more, and within moments Kanji had lifted her into the air, as Naoki threw open the doors. Yet again they were buffeted by ice-cold winds, but this time Kanji braced himself against them, proud and determined, coat now wrapped around his mother. Next to him, Naoki shivered.

"Don't worry, I'll be over as soon as I shut up shop here," the chef hailed them as he began shooing customers out of their seats. They didn't seem fussed, more concerned with the sickly woman and the kids previously barring the doorway, who moved aside to let them pass by as they offered their help and sincerest condolences.

"What about the meal?" Kanji yelled urgently through the sound of the stormy weather, that had just begun to get even worse. Things were not looking good.

"We'll settle it later!" The reply was nervous, worried, but Kanji was thankful, swiftly storming across the road to his own home. Naoki followed behind, sending a quick text to his parents to keep them informed.

After some trouble opening the door (thankfully sheltered from the worst of the storm, remedied by the timely arrival of Aiya's chef), the four, one completely unconscious, found themselves inside the house. Everything was deathly quiet, unwelcoming in the darkness; Kanji threw the lights on, alleviating some of their distress as he carefully placed his frail, weakly-gasping mother across the couch before turning to look at the TV.

"Greetings," was the first thing he heard, announcer polite and professional as always. "And now, back to today's top news story."

"Top news story?" mumbled Naoki behind him. "I wonder what that could be."

"Probably what's got Ma so worked up." He agreed with Naoki, but his voice came out hardened, expression stony; the other boy shied away a little, both of their attentions focused on the TV in front.

"Earlier today," continued the presenter, "an accident occurred that destroyed a train on the Okina city line."

"What...?" Both of them missed a beat. "Isn't the Okina City line..." The chef, still by Kanji's mother's side, breathed a heavy sigh. Kanji and Naoki turned a little, heads faced slightly more towards him.

"They've been running this story on the radio," he said, raising one hand to wipe some of the sweat pooling on Kanji's mother's brow. Her skin was cold, clammy; it worried Kanji that it was so obvious, even using just his eyes. "I don't think there'll be any new developments here. Apparently there were no casualties."

"That's a relief-" Naoki affirmed quietly, but Kanji's mother unleashed a violent cry of alarm, blindly reaching in his direction and interrupting Naoki mid-sentence. Kanji moved over to her, clasping her hand. He knew something, something important, was about to happen, and Naoki appeared just as worried as he felt.

"It was believed that there had been no casulaties." The vague sense of building dread relented a bit. Naoki sighed.

"Thank God," he said, biting his lip. Kanji shushed him, knowing whatever had done so much to his Ma couldn't have shown up yet.

"Now, however," said the announcer, cutting through their thoughts, "the police are investigating the whereabouts of one Souji Seta, currently presumed dead."

"What?" Naoki's breathless gasp coincided with Kanji's horrified bellow. Both of them looked at each other, feeling their hearts bulge in their chests at the same time.

"No! No, this can't be. It can't!" Kanji bellowed again, eyes clenched tightly shut.

"Please don't be true," Naoki added to Kanji's cry, voice cracking underneath the strain. His own hands were balled into fists, quivering with rage and sorrow. "Senpai, you can't be..."

The announcer droned on, ignorant of anything but his report. Kanji's limitless anger got the better of him, and he lashed out, putting his fist through the TV screen. Completely unexpectedly, it didn't yield the way he was used to, breaking beneath the force of his fist. He fell forward, managing to steady himself by grabbing the box, but the shards of glass that landed around his feet were digging into his skin. Tears flowed unbidden, pointlessly, from his eyes, as he curled into a heap.

"Senpai," he whispered, "you promised, damn it! You promised, never to leave us! You promised, you bastard!"

Naoki was on his feet again, head downcast, slowly trudging forward. Occasionally, Kanji noticed tears dripping from his friend's face, but his vision was blurry, colours washed out as he uselessly tried to stop crying.

"It can't be," they mourned in unison.

"He's only presumed dead, right?" the Aiya chef said, a lone voice of sanity the two clung to like a magnet. "Have faith. I'm sure your friend is fine. He's the only person who's ever beaten the Super Rainy Day Meat Bowl Challenge, after all."

"Y-yeah," Kanji stuttered, though the words became meaningless to him as soon as they left his lips. The TV crackled a little behind him, sparks cascading around the point where his hand had gone through the screen; little ripples began to burst free from the glass around his arm, and he yanked it free, ignoring the pain of the shards of glass still embedded in his fingers. He felt a little of his anger ebb away, leaving him with even more sadness, and mind-numbing despair, but most of all, anger, white-hot rage at the man – no, boy – who'd put him in such a position.

"I need to go!" Naoki yelled, running down the nearby hallway and out the door. Kanji didn't bother trying to stop him. His own grief felt like it was about to swallow him, and he instinctively knew he wasn't strong enough to shoulder anyone else's. It reminded him of Nanako, how even Souji (the bastard who didn't have the decency to go on living!) had been crushed under the weight of that burden of sorrow and regret. He didn't know if he could be stronger than that.

The sound of the door opening and closing again told him the chef from Aiya had gone, probably to get some cleaning supplies so he could deal with the glass that littered the ground around the TV. Kanji's fist was still bleeding, and that hurt a lot, but it dulled the other pain a little, the pain of abandonment, and he was thankful for that...though how he'd broken the TV still escaped him. It wasn't important now, though.

He lifted himself as best he could, crawling over to his favourite chair by the couch on which his mother lay. He plopped down in it, lazily throwing aside the pillows, and stopped trying not to cry, knowing this time, he couldn't hold it all back. It'd kill him. First he'd lost his father, and he'd seen how not crying had destroyed him then; Souji was as much family as that man had been, the person who'd given him a chance when no one else but his mother would, and helped him make use of that chance, and he'd done the same thing, left them behind. It didn't matter if it was death. _Fuck_ that shit. It was just an excuse, an excuse for the weak to run from responsibility.

He felt his mother's fingers thread through his own, intertwining his hands with hers. The touch made him want to cry even more.

"I'm so sorry, honey," she said, planting a kiss on his forehead. Momentarily he pondered whether he should call the hospital for her, but she looked a little healthier; some of the colour had come back to her skin, a few blotchy red patches on her cheeks and under her eyes that spoke of unfathomable pain. "I'm sure it'll be alright."

"I hope so, Ma," he laughed humorlessly, losing his scratchy, bawling voice to the sobs that still wracked his body. "I really hope so."

Inside he felt even emptier. He knew, in his heart, that things wouldn't be alright. They wouldn't be alright at all, for himself, for Senpai, or for anybody else.

* * *

_I'm also considering fewer pop-culture references, and Naoki/Kanji. But I'm crazy, so who knows? :D_


End file.
